TELLING  BIBLE  STORIES 


TELLING  BIBLE  STORIES 


BY 

LOUISE  SEYMOUR  HOUGHTON 


WITH  INTRODUCTION 
BY 

REV.   T.   T.   HUNGER,   D.D. 

FIFTH  EDITION,  WITH  AN  APPENDIX 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1916 


LC4&I 
M7 


COPTWOHT,   1905  AND   1908,  BY 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


TO 

FRANK  K.   SANDERS,  D.D. 

TO  WHOM 

OF  ALL  MY  LATER  TEACHERS 
I  OWE  MOST 


3380:. 


CONTENTS 


JHAPTKR  PACK 

INTRODUCTION ix 

I.    THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  THE  CHILD.        .  1 

II.    THE  MORNING  STORIES 40 

III.  MORE  MORNING  STORIES          ....  75 

IV.  BEFORE  THE  FLOOD  AND  AFTER    .        .        .  101 
V.    A  PATRIARCH  STORY 135 

VI.    OTHER  PATRIARCH  STORIES    ....  169 

VII.     HERO  TALES 190 

VIII.    ROMANCE  STORIES 217 

APPENDIX                                    .  287 


INTRODUCTION 

i 

THE  subject  of  Mrs.  Houghton's  book  has  not  often 
had  the  good  fortune  to  be  treated  by  writers  of  high 
merit,  nor  by  those  who  sympathize  with  modern 
thought  in  theology.  Consequently  the  child  has  not 
had  fair  treatment  at  the  hands  of  either  scholars  or 
theologians.  Many  times  over  since  Jesus  was  born 
have  the  babes  of  Bethlehem  been  slaughtered  by 
those  who  wield  the  sword  for  the  sake  of  doctrines 
that  Christ  never  knew;  and  others,  in  pious  weak- 
ness, have  borne  Him  away  into  some  Egypt  where 
He  sheds  no  light  upon  any  part  of  the  divine  econ- 
omy save  fulfilling  a  sentence  of  doubtful  prophecy. 

Mrs.  Houghton,  whatever  else  her  thoughtful  pages 
may  teach,  reveals  a  use  of  the  child  in  religion  hardly 
yet  suspected  until  we  learn  the  meaning  of  Christ's 
words  spoken  of  the  child,  "of  such  is  the  kingdom 
of  God,"  because  "  His  kingdom  is  over  man,  over  the 
normal,  the  ideal  man,"  and  therefore  "childhood  re- 
produces from  age  to  age  that  which  is  distinctive  of 
man;"  that  is,  the  "simply  human."  God's  king- 
dom could  be  of  no  other,  and  as  such  it  is  universal. 
Hence  Christ  said  that  He  reigned  in  that  kingdom. 
The  author  makes  this  fact  the  basis  of  her  entire 
contention,  and  because  the  child  is  such  a  revelation 
of  the  elemental  man,  he  is  by  that  very  fact  a  reve- 

iz 


x  Introduction 

lation  of  man  with  his  face  toward  God.  "The 
spontaneous  instincts  of  the  soul,  as  manifested  in 
the  child,  are  the  essentially  human  instincts.'7  The 
reader  will  note  that  this  revelation  is  not  supernatu- 
ral, but  natural,  and  is  therefore  the  reason  why  it  is 
a  revelation  of  God,  yet,  as  the  author  states,  "of 
God  in  relations  with  man." 

The  more  definite  purpose  of  the  author  is  to  start 
again  in  the  world  what  it  seems  to  be  fast  losing,— 
the  habit  of  bringing  a  child  into  a  sense  of  God  as  his 
second  nature,  and  so,  "without  argument,  show  him 
that  he  is  in  the  divine  order."  To  this  end  these 
"  God-saturated "  stories  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
real  meaning  of  which  is  always  God  in  some  human- 
divine  form,  may  thus  be  wrought  into  the  growing 
mind  of  the  child  and  become  his  governing  force 
in  life. 

Dr.  Horace  Bushnell  seems  to  have  been  the  first 
in  his  day  to  comprehend  this  truth  of  remote  an- 
tiquity; and  it  is  still  the  best  method  of  learning 
God.  He  found  himself  facing  a  system  of  religion 
that  relegated  a  knowledge  of  God  as  impossible  until 
adulthood,  when  only  —  and  after  sore  striving  —  one 
achieved  a  hypothetical  election  to  salvation,  the 
hope  of  which  was  regarded  as  an  experience  of  reli- 
gion. This  system  may  not  have  been  without  good 
result  in  view  of  a  lack  of  something  better,  but  it 
was  without  a  true  knowledge  of  God,  or  man,  or 
religion.  Its  conception  and  its  process  were  void 
of  nature,  and  this  was  regarded  as  its  strong  point, 
for  nature  was  evil.  Dr.  Bushnell  struck  at  the  root 
of  this  complication  of  mistakes,  and  demanded  that 
Christian  nurture  should  be  according  to  the  nature 


Introduction  xi 

of  a  child  as  God  made  it,  —  in  His  own  image  and 
after  His  own  laws. 

Mrs.  Houghton  has  clearly  seen  that  the  right  rear- 
ing of  a  child  lies  in  this  region  of  thought.  With 
abundant  study  and  keen  insight  into  its  cognate 
truths  she  has  produced  a  book  the  value  of  which 
is  to  be  measured  only  by  the  thoroughness  with 
which  the  general  subject  has  been  treated  in  the 
light  of  to-day's  science  and  exegesis  and  the  divine 
humanity,  as  these  things  now  lie  in  the  master  minds 
of  the  hour.  She  pays  no  heed  to  orthodoxy  or  het- 
erodoxy, regarding  them  as  mere  phrases  without, 
meaning.  Indeed,  her  treatment  lies  outside  of  either, 
and  stays  in  that  larger  world  of  thought  where  the 
real  questions  of  life  are  settled. 

In  tracing  the  likeness  of  the  child  to  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  along  the  stories  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
author  touches  the  peculiar  genius  of  the  Jewish 
people. — childlike,  but  capable  of  highest  thought. 
How  or  why  these  two  qualities  were  coupled  in  this 
race  it  is  hard  to  tell,  —  whether  by  virtue  of  some 
divine  force  in  the  child  coming  straight  from  the 
Creator  and  bringing  a  trailing  cloud  of  glory,  as 
Wordsworth  thought,  or  springing  from  some  father 
of  nations  who  had  conceived  the  germinating  thought 
of  one  invisible  God;  each  is  inscrutable  mystery. 
But  Mrs.  Houghton,  with  vital  common  sense,  has 
achieved  a  lesson  well  worth  learning  for  its  practical 
use  in  the  family,  and  also  for  pondering  the  question 
if  Christ's  consciousness  of  God  as  His  Father  devel- 
oped from  one  of  these  primal  possibilities.  Even 
while  the  child-nation  dwelt  in  tents,  it  rose  to  pro- 
founder  thought  than  the  Greeks,  who  missed  the 


xii  Introduction 

conception  of  one  invisible  God  for  that  of  many 
sporting  on  Olympus,  —  human  enough,  but  without 
a  touch  of  real  divineness.  But  the  Hebrews  brooded 
over  a  God  who  divinized  their  humanity ;  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets  telling  the  same  thing  until  One 
came,  saying  that  the  kingdom  of  God  would  come, 
but  made  of  such  as  a  child,  and  that  their  children 
would  lead  them  to  it. 

In  working  out  her  task,  Mrs.  Houghton  does  not 
write  what  is  to  be  read  to  children,  but  instead  plays 
the  part  of  a  decoy  to  tempt  adults  to  learn  from  her 
pages  what  the  stories  mean  before  they  can  have 
any  meaning  for  children  of  to-day,  who,  if  taught 
anything,  have  been  taught  what  the  Bible  stories  do 
not  mean.  We  are  not  far  astray  in  saying  that  for 
generations  children  have  seldom  been  told  the  real 
meaning  of  these  stories,  from  that  of  the  Creation  to 
that  of  Jonah,  —  the  first  and  the  last  having  been 
taught  as  history,  a  perversion  that  robs  both  of  all 
meaning.  But  the  Hebrew  child,  so  long  as  the 
parents  retained  their  native  sense  of  imagination, 
was  taught  to  see  God  in  these  and  all  other  stories, 
whatever  else  it  learned  or  failed  to  learn. 

It  is  different  to-day.  What  Sunday-school  Society 
of  any  great  denomination  does  not  permit  its  agents 
to  give  to  its  schools  lesson-books  that  any  school  of 
science  in  the  country  would  declare  to  be  false; 
books  which  find  prose  in  poetry,  fact  in  imagination, 
and  doctrine  in  sentiment?  Yet  such,  with  a  few 
fine  exceptions,  is  the  use  of  Bible  stories  in  the  vast 
majority  of  Sunday-schools  in  Christendom.  The 
effect  of  all  this  in  the  Sunday-schools  is  incipient 
JtnfideUty.  That  it  does  not  reach  full  growth  is  due 


Introduction  xiii 

to  the  fact  that  it  is  taught  with  indifference  and  dies 
out  through  lack  of  culture,  —  for  so  the  good  God 
hinders  some  of  our  well-meant  blunders. 

Mrs.  Houghton  assails  with  a  strong  pen  and  fine 
courage  one  of  these  evils  that  clings  to  the  church 
long  after  all  reason  for  it  has  passed  away.  In  sepa- 
rating the  Bible  stories  from  other  misreadings  of 
Scripture,  one  would  think  our  author  has  a  definite 
field  in  which  to  win  an  easy  victory  for  truth  and 
common  sense,  because  the  greater  part  of  mankind 
takes  side  with  the  child  when  a  good  thing  is  pro- 
vided for  it. 

The  crucial  point  where  the  battle  lies  is  the  his- 
toricity of  the  Old  Testament.  Mrs.  Houghton  deals 
with  it  in  the  same  way  that  a  sensible  parent  deals 
with  it,  —  out  of  her  own  parental  instinct,  —  suffer- 
ing the  literal  accuracy  to  take  care  of  itself,  while 
the  truth  wrapped  up  in  the  story  goes  straight  to  the 
mind  of  the  child.  It  was  the  method  of  the  Head 
Master  of  Uppingham,  whose  habit  was  to  read  a  story 
from  the  Bible  at  daily  service,  first  requiring  a  per- 
fect knowledge  of  the  text  and  then  putting  tne  sharp 
question :  "  Now,  boys,  what  is  the  truth  in  this  story  ? 
Never  mind  whether  the  story  is  true  or  not;  what 
does  it  mean?"  Dr.  Thring  sent  out  from  Uppingham  \ 
no  incipient  infidels  due  to  a  lack  of  correct  Bible 
instruction.  No  boy  taught  by  him  would  ever  scoff  \ 
B.t  the  story  of  Jonah,  or  raise  the  question  if  ravens 
fed  Elijah,  or  blunder  by  finding  a  doctrine  of  the  1 
atonement  in  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac.  It  would  not  be 
extravagant  to  say  that  if  in  the  Sunday-schools  of 
our  nation  this  manner  of  explaining  the  history  and 
the  stories  of  the  Old  Testament  should  be  taught, 


xiv  Introduction 

there  would  be  a  vast  decrease  of  infidelity  and  an 
increase  of  practical  ethics  and  belief  in  God,  instead 
of  the  meagre  fruits  that  now  follow  these  schools. 

Much  criticism  is  being  poured  out  upon  those 
scholars  who  pass  under  the  title  of  higher  critics,  as 
though  they  were  the  enemies  of  religion.  We  would 
not  say  a  word  against  their  work  or  method,  for  it 
lies  in  the  path  of  eternal  necessity.  The  very  stones 
in  the  street  would  cry  out  if  it  were  not  done.  But 
we  could  wish  their  path  led  more  often  to  the  feet  of 
Christ.  Then  the  noblest  literature,  the  truest  ethics, 
the  highest  qualities  of  human  nature,  the  sense  of 
law,  and,  above  all,  a  sense  of  God  and  obedience  t«. 
the  law  of  God,  would  not  lie  upon  the  pages  of  dead 
history,  but  in  the  ever-living  Christ  in  whom  the 
truth  of  the  past  never  dies. 

One  who  reads  these  pages  carefully  will  note  that 
Mrs.  Houghton's  interpretations  are  in  every  case 
lifted  and  ennobled  by  the  great  thought  out  of  which 
her  general  conception  of  the  Hebrew  mind  springs. 
Its  entire  scheme  of  religious  teaching  and  training 
is  to  soften  and  enlighten  and  mould  the  whole 
nature  of  the  child  in  its  plastic  years  into  likeness 
to  the  eternal  Father,  the  summation  of  which  was 
fulfilled  in  Christ. 

Under  such  interpretation  the  Christ  is  not  made 
to  appear  as  a  blank  outcome  of  miracle,  but  as  a 
divinely  natural  outcome  of  a  people  into  whose 
thought  He  was  already  born. 

Mrs.  Houghton  has  entered  into  the  thought  01 
to-day  in  regard  to  the  general  relation  of  the  Christ 
of  the  Kew  Testament  to  the  Christ  of  the  Old,  but 
we  do  not  recall  any  other  writer  who  has  found  in 


Introduction 


xv 


Christ  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  correlated  to 
the  child-history  and  character  of  the  Hebrew  people 
and  is  to  be  found  in  its  literature.  We  congratulate 
Mrs.  Houghton  upon  having  wrought  out  this  concep- 
tion as  a  fine  and  tenable  piece  of  valuable  interpre- 
tation, and  also  of  achieving  a  most  carefully  written 
series  of  studies  in  the  Old  Testament,  that  illustrate 
and  confirm  her  thesis. 

T.  T.  HUNGER. 


TELLING  BIBLE  STORIES 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  AND  THE  CHILD 


WHEN  our  Lord  chose  the  little  child  as  the 
concrete  illustration  of  His  kingdom,  it  was  not 
because  of  the  faultlessness,  nor  even  because  of 
the  humility  of  the  child.  Nor  was  it  because  of 
the  readiness  of  the  child  to  be  of  use,  to  serve, 
though  in  this  respect  the  normal  child  is  very 
like  the  Master.  Jesus  said  of  the  little  child,  "  of 
such  is  the  kingdom  of  God,"  because  His  king- 
dom is  over  man,  over  the  normal,  the  ideal  man, 
and  "childhood  reproduces  from  age  to  age  that 
which  is  distinctive  of  man";1  not  man  Greek  or 
Roman,  Anglo-Saxon  or  American,  but  simply 
human.  The  spontaneous  instincts  of  the  soul, 
as  manifested  in  the  child,  are  the  essentially 
human  instincts. 

There  is,  therefore,  a  striking  appropriateness 
in  the  words  which  form  the  subject  of  this  chap- 
ter. Seldom  have  two  words  been  so  fitly  joined 

1  George  Matheson,  D.D.,  "The  Representative  Men  of  the 
Bible." 

S 


4  Telling  Bible  Stories 

as  these,  "the  Old  Testament"  and  "the  child." 
For,  if  the  child  is  the  true  representative  of  the 
human,  so  is  the  Old  Testament  the  marvellous 
and  accurate  revelation  of  human  nature  in  all  its 
elemental  characteristics.  A  revelation  of  God, — 
yes ;  but  of  God  in  relations  with  man.  This  is, 
indeed,  the  only  possible  revelation  of  Him ;  and 
in  the  nature  of  things,  therefore,  He  is  most 
clearly  revealed  in  relations  with  that  man  who 
has  most  of  the  child  spirit. 

Some  years  ago  the  editor  of  Harper  s  Magazine, 
in  that  profound  and  original  book,  "A  Study  of 
Death,"  pointed  out  that  Israel's  was  essentially  a 
child  nature,  with  all  the  artless  spontaneity,  all 
the  sensuous  impressionability,  —  which  is  antipo- 
dally  different  from  sensuality,  —  all  the  delight  in 
color,  in  melodious  sound  and  rhythmic  motion, 
all  the  quick  sense  of  humor,  the  boundless  reach 
and  compelling  authority  of  imagination,  which 
characterize  the  child  everywhere,  in  all  ages. 
The  Old  Testament,  therefore,  the  product  of  a 
child  nation,  is  in  its  very  nature  the  book  for  the 
children  of  every  nation.  It  would  be  preemi- 
nently "  the  child's  own  book  "  even  if  it  had  no 
special  and  unique  value  of  its  own  over  other 
books  for  children. 

But  the  Old  Testament  has  a  special  and  unique 
value.  This  every  intelligent  reader  concedes, 


The   Old  Testament  and  the  Child  5 

whatever  may  be  his  views  of  the  historic  authority 
or  the  literary  importance  of  the  volume.  Its 
unique  value  lies  in  that  God-consciousness  with 
which  its  every  page  is  saturated.  The  Old  Tes- 
tament, being,  like  the  child,  a  revelation  of  the 
essential  human,  of  the  elemental  man,  is  by  that 
very  fact  a  revelation  of  man  with  his  face  toward 
God.  J__.id  this  is  why  the  Old  Testament  is  the 
natural  reading  of  the  child.  For  there  is  in  all 
the  world  nothing  so  reasonable  to  the  unsophisti- 
cated human  being  as  God.  We  never  have  to 
explain  the  word  "  God  "  to  the  youngest  baby  to 
whom  words  mean  anything.  Man  is,  indeed,  a 
religious  animal,  as  has  so  often  been  said:  the 
meaning  of  which  is,  that  long  before  the  age  of 
reason  or  reflection  arrives,  almost  before  the  baby 
has  passed  the  age  where  its  entire  consciousness 
is  a  craving  for  the  satisfaction  of  its  appetites, 
the  little  soul  reaches  out  for  God,  and  grasps  with 
satisfaction  the  fact  that  He  exists. 

The  faculty  of  God-consciousness  with  which 
the  child  is  born  is  indeed  a  twofold  inheritance. 
Dr.  Matheson,  endeavoring  to  explain  the  myste- 
rious and  baffling  dualism  of  human  nature,  its 
tendency  to  sin  and  its  faculty  for  holiness,  shows 
from  the  story  of  Adam  that  every  child  begins 
the  world  with  an  important  capital,  a  long  strain 
of  heredity,  "  a  bias  from  earth  and  a  bias  from 


6  Telling  Bible  Stories 

heaven/'  "dust  and  the  Father's  breath."  But 
even  his  inheritance  of  dust  is  not  without  the 
Father's  breath.  There  are  adumbrations  of 
religion,  as  a  recent  writer  has  shown,1  in  the 
mutual  service  of  flowers  and  of  animals  so  low 
in  the  scale  of  existence  as  sponges,  no  one  in- 
dividuality of  which  is  complete,  nor  could  exist, 
without  the  others.  These  adumbrations  of  re- 
ligion are  not  religion,  for  they  include  no  God- 
consciousness,  but  they  clearly  show  that  even 
man's  heredity  of  dust  has  an  inveterate  bias 
toward  that  faculty  of  God-consciousness  which  is 
his  heredity  from  the  Father's  breath,  and  with 
which  every  child  of  Adam  is  born  into  the 
world.  This  faculty  may  be  developed  to  a  mar- 
vellous degree  ;  it  may  be  perverted,  as  it  is 
among  the  cultivated  peoples  of  the  East ;  its 
development  may  be  arrested,  as  it  is  among  bar- 
barous peoples  of  all  primitive  societies  ;  it  may 
be  lost,  as  it  too  often  is  lost  among  progressive 
peoples  of  the  West.  Occupied  and  absorbed  as 
they  are,  with  business  or  pleasure  or  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  intellect,  the  faculty  at  last  seems  to 
disappear  for  want  of  use,  and  now,  in  this  latest 
age  of  history,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
man,  we  find  persons  of  high  intellectual  develop- 

1  Greville  Macdonald,  "  The  Religious  Sense  iii  its  Scientific 
Aspect." 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  7 

ment  and  noble  social  initiative  entirely  unaware 
of  any  need  of  God.  In  the  Museum  of  Natural 
History,  New  York,  one  may  see  those  prehistoric 
skeletons  which  show  that  the  primitive  horse 
possessed  a  well  developed  foot  of  four  toes;  and 
which  record  the  gradual  disappearance  of  three  of 
these.  That  the  change  in  this  instance  was  in 
response  to  life  conditions  does  not  affect  the  sug- 
gestiveness  of  the  fact.  As  these  members  disap- 
peared through  lack  of  use,  so  has  it  come  to  be 
with  this  highest  of  human  faculties. 

Our  children  are  born  into  this  environment 
of  the  West  and  of  the  twentieth  century,  which 
of  all  other  times  and  places  is  least  congenial  to 
the  development  of  this  fundamental  human  in- 
stinct, this  "  inevitable  God-consciousness  "  ;  and 
if  this  nation  is  not  to  become  like  France,  —  a 
nation  where  infidelity  has  the  controlling  voice 
in  the  national  councils,  a  people  whose  highest 
faculty  is  well-nigh  atrophied,  —  parents  and 
teachers  are  solemnly  bound  to  recognize  as  their 
most  important  task  that  of  developing  the  sense 
of  God  until  it  becomes  the  commanding  factor  in 
the  child's  life.  For  this  there  is  no  better  method — 
in  the  case  of  a  very  young  child  there  is  no  other 
method  —  than  "telling  Bible  stories,"  in  which, 
without  discussion  or  philosophizing,  it  is  simply 
assumed  and  shown  that  man  is  in  the  divine  order. 


8  Telling  Bible  Stories 

In  France,  indeed,  they  have  awakened  to  this 
necessity,  notwithstanding  the  noisy  attempts  of 
the  extreme  socialistic  party  to  banish  God  from 
"  all  the  thoughts  "  of  the  nation.  The  republic 
had  hardly  been  well  established  when  —  in  about 
1878  —  it  was  found  essential  to  its  preservation 
to  pass  a  law  secularizing  the  common  schools, 
replacing  clerical  teachers,  monks  and  nuns,  by 
lay  men  and  women.  One  result  of  this  act  was 
that  remarkable  development  of  "  congregational " 
free  schools,  which  has  formed  one  of  the  most 
difficult  and  dangerous  problems  of  the  govern- 
ment in  this  opening  century.  Another  result 
made  itself  more  immediately  felt.  The  next 
census  revealed  an  appalling  increase  in  child 
crime,  and  especially  in  child  suicide.  A  rising 
young  publicist,  a  serious  freethinker,  was  set 
by  government  to  study  the  causes  of  this  woful 
condition.  His  report,  afterward  published  in  a 
book  entitled  "  Crime  and  the  School,"  made  a 
deep  impression.  It  traced  the  evil  to  one  cause, 
—  the  profound  soul-discouragement  of  the  child 
who  knew  not  God.  To  such  a  child,  at  the  age 
of  ten,  at  the  age  even  of  seven,  life  became 
literally  not  worth  living,  and  he  laid  it  down 
in  despair,  or,  failing  courage  for  this  supreme 
act  of  self-renunciation,  he  plunged  into  reckless 
self-indulgence  and  crime.  This  was  the  more 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  9 

impressive  because,  in  laicizing  the  schools,  the 
government  had  been  clear-sighted  as  to  the 
moral  danger  involved,  and  had  called  to  its  aid 
the  most  brilliant  minds  in  France  to  prepare  a 
series  of  text-books  in  morals,  in  which  all  refer- 
ence to  religion  should  be  omitted,  for  every 
school  grade  from  the  infant  class  up.  The 
result  had  been,  apparently,  to  the  highest  degree 
satisfactory.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any 
country  a  series  of  text-books  on  ethics  equal  to 
these  in  literary  character  and  pedagogic  value. 
Yet  ten  years'  use  of  these  text-books  created  so 
thorough- going  a  pessimism  among  the  children 
that  they  found  goodness  not  worth  seeking  and 
life  not  worth  living.  The  result  of  this  inquiry 
led  the  French  government  to  admit  that  how- 
ever little  the  grown  man  may  find  a  need  for 
any  Supreme  Being,  yet,  during  the  educational 
period  of  the  child,  the  ultimate  sanction  of  morals 
must  be  found  in  God,  and,  notwithstanding  the 
clamors  of  the  atheistic  group,  the  name  of  God 
is  no  longer  excluded  from  school  text-books  of 
morals.  French  pedagogics  have  thus  discovered 
the  truth  underlying  Napoleon's  cynical  remark, 
that  if  there  had  been  no  God  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  invent  one. 

Yes,  the  little  child  instinctively  perceives  that 
the  religious  life  is  the  natural  life,  the  fulfilment 


10  Telling  Bible  Stories 

of  human  nature  in  truest,  largest  ways.  The 
human  being  lives  and  moves  in  the  divine  order 
—  to  ignore  this  is  to  be  abnormal.  That  "  prac- 
tice of  the  presence  of  God,"  which  is  the  last 
acquisition  of  the  profoundly  religious  man,  is  the 
ideal  atmosphere  for  the  development  of  the  child 
nature ;  and  because  it  was  the  life  habit  of  the 
men  of  ancient  Israel,  the  Old  Testament  is 
supremely  valuable  for  the  all-round  development 
of  the  child,  —  the  development  of  all  his  faculties 
and  capacitieSo 

II 

The  culture  in  the  presence  of  God  of  all  the 
child's  godlike  qualities  is  the  mother's  supreme 
task,  and  for  it  she  can  find  no  more  efficient  aid 
than  in  the  "  God-saturated  "  stories  of  the  Old 
Testament.  The  progressive  development  of  the 
child's  religious  nature,  far  more  important,  even 
for  the  practical  issues  of  life,  than  that  orderly 
development  of  his  intellectual  and  aesthetic  fac- 
ulties which  is  now  the  first  concern  of  pedagogics, 
may  best  be  accomplished  by  the  wise  use  of  these 
stories,  progressively  adapted  to  the  developing 
religious  and  moral  instincts  of  the  child. 

It  has  been  strikingly  said  that  the  ancient 
Roman  "practised  the  presence  of  Calamity." 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  11 

The  Stoic  in  all  ages  makes  it  his  study  to  meet 
disaster  unafraid.  The  Christian  has  a  more 
effectual  philosophy.  The  child  may  be  practised 
in  it  from  his  earliest  infancy  by  means  of  the 
Bible  stories,  which  keep  him  always  in  God's 
presence,  and  show  him,  without  argument,  that 
he  is  in  the  divine  order.  In  this  acutely  self- 
conscious  age  no  corrective  is  more  accurately 
adjusted  to  the  condition. 

"  When,"  says  Professor  Coe,  "  education  is 
taken  in  the  profound  sense  of  bringing  to  expres- 
sion that  which  is  deepest  and  most  real  in  man, 
then  it  becomes  a  means  of  making  him  conscious 
of  God,  in  whom  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his 
being."  "The  greatest  strategic  of  the  Church 
to-day,"  he  adds,  "lies  in  this  direction."  It  is 
preeminently  the  greatest  strategic  of  the  home, 
nor  is  it  possible  to  begin  this  education  too  early. 
It  is  abnormal  for  the  youngest  child  to  be  with- 
out God.  Nothing  in  all  the  world  is  so  reason- 
able as  God,  even  to  the  unsophisticated  man,  still 
more  so  to  the  child. 

It  will  be  admitted  without  argument  that  it  is 
impossible  to  develop  this  God-consciousness  in 
children  by  opening  to  them  the  religious  experi- 
ences of  their  parents  or  teachers.  The  absurdity 
of  the  idea  is  self-evident,  though  as  a  matter  of  fact 
many  parents  and  pastors  and  nearly  all  "children's 


12  Telling  Bible  Stories 

evangelists"  proceed  on  this  impossible  principle 
and  endeavor  to  make  the  religious  experiences  of 
children  conform  as  closely  as  possible  to  those  of 
grown  persons.  No,  we  cannot  bring  the  children 
into  relations  with  God  by  showing  them  our  own 
relations  with  Him,  because,  notwithstanding  our 
Lord's  "  Except  ye  become  as  little  children,"  we 
are  in  fact  anything  but  that.  But  the  relations 
with  God  which  we  find  mirrored  in  the  Old 
Testament  stories  are  the  relations  of  a  child  peo- 
ple with  their  heavenly  Father  ;  they  do  appeal  to 
the  child  ;  they  waken  in  him  a  response,  not  of 
the  affections  only,  but  of  the  intellect  ;  they  are 
an  adequate  and  a  compelling  force  to  lead  him, 
while  yet  a  little  child,  into  like  personal  relations 
with  God.  And  the  child  to  whom  the  sense  of 
God  early  becomes  second  nature  can  no  more  lose 
it  than  he  can  lose  the  art  of  walking  or  of  other 
acquired  habits  which  have  become  spontaneous. 
Now  it  is  psychologically  impossible  to  separate 
the  development  of  this  God-consciousness  from 
the  development  of  other  faculties  of  the  child,  and 
here  arises  the  unspeakable  mischief  of  separating 
the  religious  education  of  the  child  from  all  the 
rest  of  his  education,  as  a  thing  apart.  Not  that 
it  must  necessarily  become  a  part  of  his  school 
training,  but  that  it  should  be  carried  along  with 
that,  and  always  related  to  it.  The  spiritual  fac- 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  13 

ulty  is  not  specifically  different  from  the  faculty 
by  which  we  prosecute  the  daily  duties  of  life. 
There  is  a  certain  philosophical  convenience  in  dis- 
tinguishing between  soul  and  spirit,  but  psychologi- 
cally they  are  one.  The  soul  is  a  unit ;  the  spiritual 
nature  is  simply  the  mind  occupied  with  spiritual 
things.1  Obviously  then,  the  stories  of  the  Old 
Testament  are  preeminently  the  proper  mental  pabu- 
lum of  the  child.  "  Upon  what  is  the  really  great 
mind  fed  in  youth,  "  asks  another  recent  writer,2 
"  but  the  dreamstuff  of  poets  and  sages  ?  Now 
Homer  is  good  dreamstuff,  but  the  Bible  is  better." 

Dreamstuff?  Is  it  wise  to  encourage  the 
children  in  dreaming  ?  Is  this  the  way  to  make 
practical  men  and  women  of  them,  such  as  this 
strenuous  age  demands  ?  Is  it  even  the  way,  by 
any  possibility,  to  make  religious  men  and  women 
of  them?  The  mother  who  asks  these  questions  is 
forgetting  that  it  was  in  dreams  that  the  word  of 
the  Lord  came  to  His  servants  of  old.  If  we  do 
not  hear  His  voice  in  our  dreams,  waking  or  sleeping, 
it  is  doubtful  whether  we  shall  ever  hear  Him.  If 
we  have  not  heard  His  voice  in  our  dreams,  waking 
or  sleeping,  may  it  not  be  for  not  having  been 
nourished  upon  the  best  "  dreamstuff  "  ? 

This  comparison  of  the  relative  values  of  "dream- 
stuffs  "  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  the 
1  Professor  Coe.  2  Rev.  Newton  M.  Hall. 


14  Telling  Bible  Stories 

highest  use  of  all  literature  is  not  to  fill  us  with 
facts,  but  to  set  us  to  thinking.  We  teach  the 
children  history  not  half  so  much  in  order  that  they 
may  know,  and  always  remember,  things  that  have 
happened,  as  that  they  may  understand  life,  and 
how  to  meet  it.  We  repeat  poetry  to  the  little 
ones  and  tell  them  fairy  tales,  not  merely  to  amuse 
them,  nor  as  an  exercise  for  the  memory,  but  as 
a  stimulus  to  the  imagination  and  to  the  aesthetic 
sense.  The  Old  Testament  stories  serve  both  these 
purposes.  The  spontaneous  instincts  of  the  child, 
and  the  almost  equally  spontaneous  revelations  of 
human  nature  in  these  stories,  correspond  one  to 
another  as  face  answers  to  face  in  water.  The  per- 
petual splendor  of  sentences  in  the  Old  Testament, 
the  lofty  sublimity  of  its  suggestions,  appeal  to 
the  sensuous  nature  of  the  child  as  no  other  litera- 
ture does ;  and  there  is  no  nobler  endowment  of  a 
well-born  and  well-bred  human  being  than  a  rich 
sensuous  nature. 

Especially  appealing  to  the  child  is  the  freshness 
of  feeling  which  characterizes  the  Old  Testament 
poetry,  making  Herder's  remark  literally  as  well 
as  figuratively  true,  that  it  should  be  read  in  the 
dawn  of  the  morning,  because  it  was  the  first  dawn 
of  the  illumination  of  the  soul.  The  poetic  char- 
acter of  the  Old  Testament  also  makes  it  the  chil- 
dren's book  because  the  child's  nature  is  the  poet's 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  15 

nature.  Not  only  does  the  little  child  love  rhythm 
and  the  balance  of  measured  utterance, — so  that  it  is 
not  in  the  least  necessary  that  he  should  understand 
a  poem  or  a  bit  of  doggerel  in  order  to  delight  in 
it,  — it  is  also  true  that  the  child  rejoices  in  poetic 
forms  of  utterance,  in  tropes  and  figures  of  speech, 
and  in  the  play  of  the  imagination .  In  this  respect 
the  Old  Testament  is  peculiarly  the  little  child's 
book.  It  abounds  in  metaphor  and  poetic  imagery. 
For  example,  where  the  Old  Testament  would  refer 
to  great  trees,  trees  whose  size  was  notable,  it  calls 
them  "trees  of  God."  Our  giant  redwoods  in 
California  would  surely  be  "  trees  of  God  "  to  the 
mind  of  the  old  Hebrew,  and  no  other  expression 
would  so  well  satisfy  a  child's  sense  of  awe  on  see- 
ing these  trees.  So  with  the  mighty  voice  of  the 
thunder.  It  was  no  attempt  at  scientific  explana- 
tion, but  true  poetic  instinct  which  impelled  the 
psalmist  to  call  thunder  "the  voice  of  Jehovah." 

The  voice  of  Jehovah  is  upon  the  waters, 

The  God  of  glory  thundereth, 

Even  Jehovah  upon  many  waters. 

The  voice  of  Jehovah  is  powerful, 

The  voice  of  Jehovah  is  full  of  majesty, 

The  voice  of  Jehovah  breaketh  the  cedars, 

Yea,  Jehovah  breaketh  in  pieces  the  cedars  of  Lebanon. 

A.nd  in  his  temple  everything  saith,  Glory !  l 
1  Psalm  xxix. 


16  Telling  Bible  Stories 

The  ancient  Hebrew  had  no  notion  of  science. 
He  did  not  ask  for  the  immediate  cause  of  physi- 
cal events.  It  entirely  satisfied  his  instinct  for 
ultimate  truth  to  assume  that  thunder  was  God's 
voice;  that  God  had  planted  those  cedars  whose 
life  reached  back  before  the  memory  of  man.  He 
related  all  mysteries  to  God,  and  in  that  relation- 
ship his  mind  rested  and  his  heart  was  satisfied. 

This  is  why  miracle  made  such  strong  appeal 
to  the  Hebrew  mind.  To  him  it  was  "  a  sign," 
the  manifestation  of  the  most  profoundly  true 
of  all  facts,  the  immanent  activity  of  God  in  every 
event  of  life.  This  is  an  important  clue  to  the 
treatment  of  the  Biblical  miracles.  As  myth  is 
the  explanation  offered  by  the  primitive  mind  to 
the  mysteries  of  surrounding  nature,  so  a  people 
deeply  stirred  by  moral  problems  have,  in  primi- 
tive times,  recourse  to  miracle  to  explain  mys- 
teries in  the  moral  sphere.  This  fact  is  an 
important  clue  to  the  miracles  of  the  Bible,  and 
to  far  more  than  its  miracles.  The  very  view- 
point of  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testament,  espe- 
cially of  those  parts  of  it  that  we  call  Bible 
stories,  is  always  the  viewpoint  of  God.  They 
looked  upon  nature  and  the  world  from  above. 
Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  in  that  book  of 
revelation  which  should  lie  on  every  mother's 
and  teacher's  table  beside  the  Bible,  —  "  The  His* 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  17 

toricai  Geography  of  the  Holy  Land,"  —  explains 
the  nature  descriptions  of  the  Bible  by  saying 
that  the  Hebrew  was  a  highlander,  and  described 
nature  from  the  heights.  But  there  is  far  more 
in  these  descriptions  than  a  highlander  can  see. 
The  Hebrew  poet  sees  even  the  mountain  tops 
from  above,  and  the  cloud  effects  as  if  he  were 
looking  down  from  high  heaven.  "Jehovah  march- 
eth  upon  his  high  place ;  Israel  treadeth  upon  his 
high  places"  Joel  sees  the  lurid  light  of  dawn 
shattered  on  the  mountain  tops,1  crushed  between 
the  hills,  "  spilled  like  the  wine  press  of  the  wrath 
of  God."  Though  not  a  maritime  people  Israel 
yet  had  wonderful  visions  of  the  sea-coast  and 
the  sea,  for  he  saw  them  as  God  sees  them,  —  from 
above.  For  the  same  reason  such  words  as 
"valley"  and  "depth"  had  a  profound  meaning 
to  him ;  they  spoke  of  God's  unfathomable  judg- 
ments. The  deep  abyss  of  the  Ghor  —  the  Jordan 
Valley — was  a  synonym  for  terror  and  destruc- 
tion; freedom,  salvation,  were  "a  wide  place." 

The  child  mind  is  intensely  susceptible  to  these 
images.  They  are  the  most  perfect  food  and 
stimulus  for  it.  The  poetic  descriptions  of  nature 
in  the  Old  Testament  are  the  best  possible  aids 
to  the  cultivation  of  that  eminently  cultivatable 
and  most  valuable  faculty,  love  of  fine  scenery, 
i  Joel  ii.  2. 


18  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Some  of  the  poems  in  Canticles  are  admirable  for 
this  purpose.  As  a  whole,  the  Song  of  Solomon 
is  not  a  story  for  the  little  children,  not  because 
it  is  a  love  drama,  but  because  its  literary  char- 
acter is  beyond  them,  just  as  "  The  Princess  "  is. 
But  its  lyrics,  like  those  in  "  The  Princess,"  are 
exquisite,  and  appeal  early  to  the  child's  aesthetic 
sense.  In  fact,  the  book  may  come  somewhat 
early  into  the  child's  educational  experiences  if  it 
be  used,  not  to  teach  the  love  of  Christ  for  His 
Church,  but  to  give  expression  to  the  child's 
gladness  in  the  beauty  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lives. 

For  all  these  reasons,  and  for  many  more  which 
will  appear  as  we  go  on,  the  Old  Testament  is 
preeminently  the  child's  book.  This  is  no  doubt 
what  President  Stanley  Hall  meant,  a  few  years 
ago,  when  he  said  that  the  Old  Testament  stories 
are  the  proper  beginning  of  the  religious  education 
of  the  child.  The  statement  was  as  much  dis- 
cussed at  that  time  as  President  Butler's  later 
plea  for  the  literary  study  of  the  Bible  in  the 
schools  has  been  discussed  since  then,  and  to  the 
children  it  is  of  more  importance  than  the  later 
utterance.  It  is  the  religious  value  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  the  life  experience  of  the  little  child 
that  most  concerns  us.  Its  literary  importance 
is  very  great.  We  are  hearing  much  about  it  in 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  19 

these  days,  and  teachers  are  beginning  to  awake 
to  it.  Its  ethical  value  is  also  of  the  highest  im- 
portance, although  in  the  current  discussions  of 
the  ethics  of  the  Old  Testament  we  do  not  detect 
any  general  approval.  When  this  nation  has 
advanced  as  far  as  the  French  in  a  working 
knowledge  of  child  psychology,  we  shall  see  that 
even  as  a  matter  of  education  the  religious  im- 
portance of  the  Old  Testament  underlies,  as  it 
transcends,  its  literary  and  its  ethical  importance. 
Probably  most  of  the  mothers  who  read  Presi- 
dent Stanley  Hall's  remark  experienced  a  feeling 
at  once  of  relief  and  perplexity.  They  were  re- 
lieved, because,  having  themselves  been  "brought 
up  on  "  the  Old  Testament  stories,  and  still  cher- 
ishing their  childhood's  love  for  them,  they  were 
glad  to  find  those  wise  persons  mistaken  who  had 
assured  them  that  to  give  the  children  the  Old 
Testament  would  be  to  take  a  backward  step  in 
ethical  training.  And  yet  they  were  perplexed, 
because  having  become  aware,  through  much 
newspaper  and  magazine  discussion,  if  not  by 
the  teaching  of  pastors  and  the  discoveries  of 
their  own  Bible  reading,  that  the  Old  Testament 
is  not  precisely  the  sort  of  book  that  their  parents 
and  grandparents  held  it  to  be,  they  were  thrown 
back  upon  the  question  that  had  been  troubling 
them  before :  "  How,  knowing  as  I  do,  that  the 


20  Telling  Mile  Stories 

Old  Testament  is  not  precisely  such  a  book  as  I 
was  taught  to  think  it,  and  not  knowing  as  yet 
precisely  what  sort  of  a  book  it  is,  how  shall  I 
interpret  it  to  my  children  ?  " 

This  question  may  be  answered  at  once  by  say- 
ing that  in  the  beginning  it  is  not  necessary  to 
interpret  the  stories  to  the  children, — all  the 
mother  has  to  do  is  to  tell  them,  as  nearly  as 
possible  in  the  very  words  in  which  they  were 
written,  preserving  as  far  as  one  may  the  grand, 
quaint,  old-fashioned  simplicity  of  the  Bible 
language,  seeking  as  far  as  possible  to  fill  the 
child  with  the  spirit  of  the  great  men  of  whom 
the  stories  tell,  and  to  vitalize  their  nature  with 
the  atmosphere  of  the  old  book.  We  do  not  try 
to  interpret  "  The  splendor  falls "  or  "  Break, 
break,  break  !  "  or  "  Oh,  Brignall  banks  are  fresh 
and  fair  "  or  even  "  John  Gilpin."  We  simply  re- 
peat the  lines  and  let  the  child  revel  in  them, 
pouring  into  them  such  meaning  as  his  own  heart 
supplies.  We  do  not  give  the  dictionary  mean- 
ing of  the  words  with  which  we  teach  our  babies 
to  talk.  We  simply  say  them  often,  and  the 
child  gives  them  a  meaning.  As  the  children 
grow  older,  indeed,  the  task  grows  more  complex 
in  both  cases.  The  present  effort  is  to  understand 
something  of  the  nature  of  that  complexity. 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  21 


III 


There  are,  indeed,  some  who,  for  practical  rea- 
jons,  desire  to  learn  how  to  tell  the  Bible  stories 
to  their  children,  not  from  any  intellectual  per- 
plexity as  to  the  character  of  the  Old  Testament, 
but  simply  that  they  may  make  their  stories  more 
interesting.  They  are  thoroughly  persuaded  that 
the  Bible  is  precisely  what  their  parents  taught 
them  that  it  was.  They  believe  that  it  was  in- 
spired by  God,  from  cover  to  cover,  and  all  parts 
of  equal  authority  though  not  of  equal  impor- 
tance, especially  to  the  children0  A  few  of  these 
are  telling  their  children  the  Bible  stories  in  the 
dear  old  way  of  their  mothers  and  grandmothers  ; 
but  they  are  not  following  the  same  good  example 
in  keeping  up  the  spiritual  culture  of  their  chil- 
dren by  encouraging  them  as  they  grow  older  to 
read  the  Old  Testament  by  themselves,  as  they 
read  other  delightful  books.  They  do  not  expect 
their  children  to  read  a  chapter  a  day,  as  their 
own  parents  expected  them  to  do  ;  they  do  not 
feel  quite  sure  that  it  would  be  expedient.  Nor 
are  they  particularly  disturbed  if  the  father's 
business  prevents  him  from  reading  the  Bible 
with  the  children  at  family  prayers.  Perhaps 
this  would  all  be  just  as  well  if  they  had  estab- 


22  Telling  Bible  Stories 

lished  a  better  way,  but  they  have  not;  and  there- 
fore the  beautiful  promise  of  genuine  piety  which 
their  little  children  gave  fades  away  as  the  boys 
and  girls  begin  to  grow  up. 

These  parents  do  not  take  special  pains  to 
give  the  Old  Testament  to  their  children  because 
they  fail  to  see  how  it  can  be  useful  to  them. 
Though  they  cherish  their  "  mother's  Bible  "  as 
she  cherished  it,  they  are  by  no  means  follow- 
ing their  mother's  example  in  its  use  in  the 
religious  training  of  their  children.  In  which, 
if  Dr.  Hall  is  right,  they  are  surely  making  a 
mistake. 

These  mothers,  however,  are  a  rapidly  dimin- 
ishing class.  The  younger  generation,  being  of 
the  modern  time  by  years  and  education,  are 
themselves  ignorant  of  the  Old  Testament,  how- 
ever carefully  they  may  have  been  taught  to 
reverence  it  as  the  very  word  of  God.  Being 
interested  in  educational  problems,  these  young 
mothers  need  not  now  to  be  convinced  that  the 
children  should  know  this  book.  Have  not  Presi- 
dent Butler  and  Dr.  Hall  and  Patterson  DuBois 
and  Dr.  Hervey  and  a  host  of  writers  on  peda- 
gogics and  child  psychology  said  so  ?  But  as  for 
undertaking  themselves  to  introduce  their  chil- 
dren to  it  —  as  well  expect  them  to  give  them 
manual  training  and  military  drill  I  It  is  for  the 


"  The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  23 

help  of  mothers  such  as  these  that  the  following 
chapters  are  written. 


IV 


Two  things  are  essential  to  the  mother  who 
would  find  in  the  Old  Testament  that  help  in  the 
child's  spiritual  nurture  which,  as  President  Hall 
has  said,  and  as  I  believe,  it  has  to  give  her  in 
those  brief  blessed  years  before  her  child  goes  out 
from  her  brooding  influence  to  be  acted  upon  by 
influences  which  she  cannot  entirely  control.  She 
must  understand  the  nature  of  the  child,  and 
she  must  recognize  the  true  character  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Both  fields  of  study  are  exhaustless ; 
if  one  waited  even  for  a  beginning  of  proficiency 
in  either,  the  fleeting  years  of  the  mother's  oppor- 
tunity would  be  gone.  Happily,  both  these 
branches  of  "things  to  be  learned"  are  of  those 
which,  as  Froebel  says,  are  to  be  learned  in  the 
doing  of  them,  and,  most  happily,  each  throws 
light  upon  the  other.  We  have  already  seen  that 
the  child  nature  is  the  key  to  the  Old  Testament. 
It  is  equally  true  that  the  Old  Testament  is  the 
interpreter  of  the  child  nature.  No  work  on 
child  psychology  will  prove  so  apt  and  so  immedi- 
ate a  help  to  the  mother  who  would  understand 
her  child  as  the  stories  of  the  Old  Testament. 


24  Telling  Bible  Stories 

For  this  purpose  those  ancient  people,  as  Dr. 
Matheson  says,  are  not  yet  an  anachronism,  "  they 
reveal  human  nature  not  only  in  its  eternal  same- 
ness but  in  its  eternal  variations,"  because  they 
are  all  portraits  of  the  age  of  spontaneity,  that  is, 
of  youth,  whatever  may  be  the  number  of  years 
that  have  passed  over  the  heads  of  their  heroes. 
In  this  respect  the  Old  Testament  is  also  the 
mother's  own  book. 

Let  not  the  mother,  however,  underrate  the 
difficulties  which  she  will  encounter  in  giving  the 
Old  Testament  to  her  children.  There  are  others 
besides  those  of  the  higher  criticism,  —  the  au- 
thorship of  the  Pentateuch  and  parts  of  Isaiah, 
the  historic  character  of  Genesis,  and  such  like. 
There  are  questions  of  morality,  —  the  plain 
speaking  of  some  chapters,  the  inadequate  notions 
of  right  in  some  others,  the  want  of  harmony  with 
the  assured  conclusions  of  science,  the  perplexities 
of  miracles.  But,  in  fact,  these  are  difficulties 
only  to  the  mother  who  puts  the  Old  Testament 
into  the  hands  of  her  growing  child,  not  having 
early  familiarized  him  with  it,  and  brought  him 
into  sympathy  with  its  spirit,  by  telling  him  Bible 
stories  while  he  was  yet  in  her  arms.  They  are 
not  difficulties  to  the  mother  who,  before  she 
began  to  tell  the  stories,  had  reached  an  adequate 
conception  of  the  actual  character  of  the  book, 


1  The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  25 

and   its   relation  to   the  normal   development   of 
her  child. 

In  seeking  for  this  conception  we  begin  with 
the  Bible  story,  partly  because  it  is  where  the 
little  child  begins,  partly  because  of  the  great 
value  of  the  story  in  making  manifest  the  actual 
character  of  the  Old  Testament.  Very  certainly, 
the  more  clearly  we  understand  the  value  set 
upon  the  story  by  the  writers  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  better  we  shall  understand  the  book 
itself.  The  Old  Testament  contains  an  enormous 
amount  of  story  lore,  far  more  than  any  one 
realizes  until  his  attention  is  especially  directed  to 
this  matter.  The  field  of  this  story  lore  is  very 
vast.  The  prophetic  use  of  this  lore  opens  a 
boundless  and  beautiful  vista.  The  prophets 
used  the  short  story  for  a  great  variety  of  pur- 
poses, though  few  Bible  readers  even  suspect  this. 
Their  striking  and  effective  use  of  the  "  walking 
parable"  has  lately  been  pointed  out  by  Dean 
Sanders.  When  Jeremiah  wanted  most  effec- 
tively to  warn  Israel  that  if  they  did  not  repent 
and  turn  from  their  evil  ways  they  must  become 
captives  of  Babylon,  he  put  an  ox  yoke  on  his 
shoulders  and  went  walking  through  the  public 
places  of  Jerusalem.  That  ox  yoke,  as  Dr.  San- 
ders says,  spelled  captivity.  The  story  tells  us 
how  the  prophet  Hananiah,  who  highly  disap- 


26  Telling  Bible  Stories 

proved  of  such  teaching,  holding  that  Israel  ought 
not  to  be  discouraged  at  such  a  critical  time  in 
the  nation's  history,  took  the  ox  yoke  off  from 
Jeremiah's  shoulders  and  broke  it,  signifying 
that  even  should  captivity  come  it  could  easily 
be  broken  or  shaken  off.  But  Jeremiah  had 
no  notion  of  submitting  to  any  such  contra- 
diction of  his  story.  He  went  and  had  an  in- 
terview with  the  blacksmith,  and  shortly  after 
appeared  in  public  wearing  a  yoke  of  iron,  which 
Hananiah  could  no  more  break  than  he  could 
avert  the  threatened  captivity,  or  break  it  when 
it  came,  as  it  shortly  did. 

How  fascinating  a  story  this  for  the  little  child  ! 
And  the  prophets  are  full  of  such.  Ezekiel  lying 
for  long  days  in  the  sight  of  the  exiled  Jews  in 
Babylon,  lying  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the 
other,  in  front  of  his  toy  besieged  city,  with  mimic 
mount  and  battering  rams  set  over  against  it 
and  an  iron  pan  by  way  of  wall,  thus  bringing 
home  to  the  curious  onlookers  a  realizing  sense  of 
the  awful  siege  that  their  beloved,  far  away  Jeru- 
salem was  soon  to  pass  through  ;  Jeremiah  hiding 
his  linen  girdle  in  the  hole  in  the  rock  or  visiting 
the  potter  at  work  on  his  two  wheels  —  a  story 
the  meaning  of  which  is  far  otherwise  impressive 
and  hopeful  than  the  theologians  have  made  it  to 
be,  —  interesting  parables  like  these  abound  in  the 


'The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  27 

prophets,  and  to  tell  them  to  the  children,  as 
stories,  while  they  are  young,  is  the  best  of  all 
introductions  to  a  very  sublime  collection  of  litera- 
ture, of  far-reaching  ethical  import  not  only,  but 
of  the  highest  aesthetic  value. 

The  prophets,  indeed,  were  almost  entirely  de- 
pendent upon  the  story  form,  and  their  histories 
are  simply  long  stories.  First  Samuel,  for  in- 
stance,  is  one  great  story,  and  not  in  any  modern 
acceptation  of  the  words  either  a  history  or  a 
biography.  It  is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  books 
in  the  Bible,  whether  for  the  mother,  the  teacher, 
or  the  minister,  and  from  it  we  learn,  among  other 
things,  the  true  character  of  all  the  Bible  stories, 
which  is  to  give  religious  meaning  to  all  the  expe- 
riences of  life,  even  of  the  life  of  the  little  child. 
We  know  what  great  use  our  Lord  Jesus  made 
of  the  story.  Probably  those  parables  which  we 
have  in  the  Gospels  are  only  a  selection  from  a 
wealth  of  these  incomparable  stories. 

It  is  important  at  the  outset  of  any  study  of  the 
Old  Testament  stories  to  seek  the  reasons  which 
actuated  Jesus  as  well  as  the  ancient  prophets  in 
using  almost  exclusively  this  method  of  teaching. 
One  reason  doubtless  was  that  the  story  is  pecu- 
liarly well  adapted  to  present  truth  to  the  Orien- 
tal mind.  The  Hebrew  people,  even  more  than 
other  Orientals,  were  especially  fond  of  story  in 


28  Telling  Bible  Stories 

all  its  forms,  —  parable,  apothegm,  proverb,  —  care- 
fully worked  out  to  a  high  artistic  finish.  Another 
reason  lies  in  the  purpose  of  the  story.  Its  design 
in  Scripture  is  the  design  of  all  Scripture,  —  to  set 
forth  the  essential  relationship  between  God  and 
man,  and  to  show  it  as  a  working  relationship, 
capable  of  being  realized  in  practice.  Again,  as 
has  already  been  seen,  the  purpose  of  the  story 
is  not  to  fill  the  mind  with  facts,  but  to  set  it 
to  thinking.  All  these,  but  especially  the  last, 
are  important  considerations  for  the  mother  who 
"  tells  stories  "  to  her  children.  When  the  story- 
telling hour  comes,  and  she  asks  herself  how  she 
shall  choose  between  the  stories  that  she  knows  or 
can  invent,  let  her  ask  herself  which  of  them  will 
best  appeal  to  that  marvellous  thought  apparatus 
the  exercise  of  which  is  to  the  children  so  thrilling 
a  delight.  I  do  not  mean  which  has  the  best 
moral,  but  which  best  sets  in  motion  that  incom- 
parable machinery. 

Very  important  is  the  stimulus  that  stories  give 
to  constructive  imagination.  For  example,  the 
great  vision  on  the  Mount  of  Olives,  in  the  twenty- 
third  chapter  of  Matthew,  belongs  in  a  sense  to  the 
story  form,  and  dwelt  upon  as  we  dwell  upon  the 
story  it  stimulates  the  constructive  imagination 
and  gives  a  boundlessly  large  view  of  life  and  of 
the  great  plan  of  God. 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  29 

The  story  is  particularly  valuable  because  it 
makes  truth  attractive.  I  am  not  now  referring 
to  fact  but  to  truth.  The  truth,  for  example, 
that  no  pagan  is  necessarily  excluded  from  the 
household  of  God  is  not  particularly  interesting 
to  the  thoughtful  mind.  But  embody  it  in  the 
story  of  Ruth,  and  how  beautiful,  how  picturesque, 
poetic,  pathetic,  dignified  a  truth  it  becomes! 
And  though  upon  the  mind  of  the  little  child  the 
story  will  properly  make  a  larger  impression  than 
the  truth,  yet  it  is  a  seed  truth  which  needs  only 
the  normal  degree  and  kind  of  care  to  spring  up 
in  the  mind  of  any  boy  or  girl  and  fructify  in  that 
comprehensive  interest  in  the  human  race  which 
must  underlie  all  future  civilization.  Had  the 
story  been  thus  treated  by  our  pious  ancestors, 
their  children  would  not  have  been  agitated  by 
the  question  whether  Socrates  and  Plato  might 
possibly  be  saved;  and  foreign  missions  would 
have  been  put  upon  a  more  enduring  basis  than 
that  idea  which  resulted  in  calculations  as  to  how 
many  "heathen"  are  "dropping  into  hell"  per 
minute.  Moreover,  had  this  story  of  Ruth  and 
that  other  story  of  Jonah  been  understood  by  the 
early  Church,  the  sorrowful  story  of  the  Jews  in 
Christian  lands  would  never  have  been  told. 

The  story  form  appeals  to  all  ages  and  all  grades 
of  mind.  Savage  and  sage  enjoy  the  same  tale, 


30  Telling  Bible  Stories 

though  the  one  may  find  in  it  rich  values  un- 
dreamed of  by  the  other.  For  the  same  reason  it 
is  particularly  well  adapted  for  conveying  spirit- 
ual truth.  The  power  of  man  with  God  is  a 
spiritual  truth  of  unfathomable  profundity ;  but 
the  theologian  or  the  philosopher  has  not  lived, 
and  perhaps  never  will  live,  who  will  put  it  more 
intelligibly  and  forcibly  than  it  was  put  ages  ago 
in  the  story  of  Jacob  wrestling  with  the  angel  at 
the  brook  Jabbok,  a  story  which  the  youngest 
child  will  delight  to  hear  and  to  think  about. 

In  other  words,  the  great  value  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament stories  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  put  abstract 
truth  into  concrete  form,  to  be  interpreted  by  the 
imagination.  It  is  many  years  since  Horace  Bush- 
nell, — to  whom  the  religious  thought  of  to-day,  and 
especially  the  child  nurture  of  to-day,  owes  so  much, 
—  taught  an  uncomprehending  people  that  "the 
gift  of  God  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  is  a  gift  to  the 
imagination "  ;  that  in  it  that  which  is  given  to 
faith  "  is  put  forth  in  some  fact,  form,  or  symbol,  to 
be  interpreted  by  the  imaginative  insight."  The 
whole  Bible,  he  said,  is  in  one  sense  pictorial,  "  its 
every  line  or  lineament  is  traced  in  some  image 
or  metaphor."  In  it  "all  the  past  is  taken  up  in 
metaphor  for  the  future."  Thus  the  story  of 
Cain  and  Abel  is  worth  a  volume  on  the  sin  of 
murder.  The  story  of  the  Good  Samaritan  has 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  31 

become  the  universal  symbol  of  neighborliness, 
and  to  say  that  Jesus  is  the  great  metaphor  of 
God  involves  no  irreverence. 

There  are  no  stories  in  any  language,  or  of  any 
age  of  the  world,  which  so  aptly  and  precisely 
perform  this  function  as  the  Bible  stories,  and 
this  for  a  very  simple  reason,  —  the  language  in 
which  they  were  originally  written,  the  Hebrew, 
like  the  child's  language,  has  no  abstract  words. 
All  Hebrew  words  are  concrete,  just  as  the  little 
child's  words  are.  This  explains  the  splendor  of 
the  metaphors  in  the  Old  Testament  and  its  rich 
poetic  imagery.  The  poetic  imagery  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  often  perplexing  to  grown  people, 
especially  of  Occidental  lands.  It  continually  leads 
astray  theologians,  who  have  even  yet  not  learned 
from  Dr.  Bushnell  that  "  in  our  non-use  or  abuse 
of  this  instrument  [the  imagination]  a  great  part 
of  our  religious  difficulties  have  their  spring."  It 
also  leads  astray  the  plain  people,  who,  having  out- 
grown the  poetry  of  childhood,  have  become  prosaic 
without  having  found  their  way  into  the  realm  of 
the  abstract.  But  this  imagery  never  puzzles  the 
little  child,  unsurprised  as  yet  by  the  experiences 
of  life;  that  is  to  say,  poetic  imagery  never 
puzzles  the  little  child  until  we  begin  to  explain 
it  to  him.  Then  perhaps  it  may. 


32  Telling  Bible  Stories 


Now  it  is  precisely  the  child  nature  of  Israel 
that  makes  those  parts  of  the  Old  Testament 
which  we  call  historic  so  much  more  intelligible 
to  the  children  than  they  are  to  us.  The  child 
of  eight  is  in  far  deeper  and  more  accurate  sym- 
pathy than  his  mother  with  Gideon  and  Samson 
and  David,  with  Jacob  and  Rebecca  and  Joseph, 
because  all  these  are  elemental  natures,  simple, 
dominated  by  a  single  but  imperative  motive. 
His  parents  are  too  self -controlled  ;  they  have 
gone  too  deep  into  the  complex  problems  of 
life  as  it  now  is,  and  character  as  centuries  of 
civilization  have  formed  it,  to  have  any  very 
real  sympathy  with  characters  of  this  kind. 
Thus,  though  ferocity  is  repugnant  to  all  adults 
of  refinement,  the  ferocity  of  some  cv  *he  Old 
Testament  stories  is  not  repugnant  to  our  little 
children,  and  we  mistake  if  we  refuse  to  tell  them 
these  stories  because  of  their  supposed  demoralizing 
tendency.  To  the  little  children  they  are  not  de- 
moralizing. It  is  thoroughly  natural  and  in  a  sense 
proper  for  children  to  pass  through  a  stage  of 
ferocity.  That  marvellous  science,  embryology, 
teaches  us  that  the  unborn  child  in  its  nine 
months  of  prenatal  existence  goes  through  the 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  33 

entire  history  of  the  development  of  sentient 
life;  and  this  discovery  is  now  leading  us  to 
the  more  important  psychological  truth  that  the 
mental  and  spiritual  faculties  of  man  have  an 
analogous  history,  and  we  do  a  serious  injury 
to  the  children  when  we  refuse  to  leave  room 
for  their  natural  development.  We  do  them 
an  injury  which  the  unscientific  mothers  of  a 
past  generation  were  saved  from  doing  their 
children,  because  they  left  them  much  to  them- 
selves, and  did  not  insist  upon  sedulously  study- 
ing and  minutely  guiding  them  in  every  hour  of 
their  little  lives.  And  so  their  minds  grew  nor- 
mally, as  the  tree  grows  in  the  open  field,  not  as 
it  grows  in  a  dense  forest  or  in  a  Japanese  garden. 
The  mental  development  of  every  child  natur- 
ally repeats  the  mental  history  of  the  race,  and  in 
its  first  years  it  has  not  only  the  strong  poetic 
nature  conspicuous  in  all  primitive  peoples,  but 
also  that  instinctive  ferocity  through  which  the 
race  has  necessarily  passed.  It  was  a  true  im- 
pulse which  gave  to  nursery  lore  the  grewsome- 
ness  of  the  ogre  and  the  retributive  justice  of 
Jack  the  Giant- Killer,  the  machinations  of  the 
wicked  stepmother  and  the  heartlessness  of  the 
older  sisters,  with  all  the  pains  and  penalties  they 
brought  upon  themselves.  And  those  editors  of 
child  literature  make  more  than  one  mistake  who 


34  Telling  Bible  Stories 

carefully  expurgate  these  features  from  the  folk 
tales  which  are  the  rightful  heritage  of  the  chil- 
dren. Better  a  thousand  times,  not  only  on 
literary  but  on  moral  grounds,  the  revengeful 
dwarfs  and  the  murderous  giant-killer  and  the 
contemptible  older  sisters  of  the  old  nursery  tales 
than  the  golliwogs  and  goops  and  nonsense  rhymes 
with  which  our  nurseries  are  flooded.  Not  that 
pure  nonsense  has  not  also  its  place  there.  The 
little  child's  sense  of  humor  is  surprisingly  fresh 
and  keen.  It  sees  real  fun  in  things  which  to  its 
parents  are  simply  absurd.  But  the  function  of 
nonsense  is  very  limited,  and  its  tendency  is  pre- 
cisely the  opposite  of  that  of  folk-lore,  deadening 
instead  of  nourishing  the  imagination. 

Yet  it  is  certainly  true  that  as  in  the  unborn 
child  the  history  of  myriad  ages  is  repeated  in  two 
hundred  and  fifty  days,  so  in  the  child  nature  the 
period  of  ferocity  is  perceptibly  shortening ;  and 
it  is  precisely  here  that  the  Old  Testament  has  a 
high  value  as  a  classic  for  children,  because  the 
interest  of  the  story  does  not  centre  in  the  fero- 
city and  other  indications  of  a  low  moral  stand- 
ard, but  in  that  God-consciousness  which  is  so 
marvellously  the  essential  characteristic  of  the 
Old  Testament  from  its  first  word  to  its  last.  If 
Samuel  hews  Agag  in  pieces,  he  hews  him  in 
pieces  before  the  Lord.  If  Jehu  exterminates  the 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  35 

posterity  of  Ahab,  it  is  his  zeal  for  Jehovah  that 
motives  the  sanguinary  policy,  as  it  also  motives 
Elijah's  slaughter  of  the  priests  of  Baal.  Even  that 
excessively  difficult  story  of  the  bears  that  tore 
the  forty-two  children  who  had  been  disrespectful 
to  Elisha  very  clearly  has  a  religious  motive,  so 
obvious  to  the  children  that  we  never  find  any 
little  child  shocked  by  the  moral  implication  of 
the  story.  It  served  the  children  right. 

By  this  God-consciousness  it  is  that,  meeting  the 
child  at  every  period  of  its  development  on  its  own 
ground,  —  its  love  of  poetry,  its  faculty  for  won- 
der, its  elemental  passions,  its  rudimentary  moral 
standards,  —  the  Old  Testament  never  becomes 
outworn  as  the  nursery  tales  do,  but  by  its  constant 
appeal  to  that  most  universal  of  all  faculties,  —  the 
religious  faculty,  the  capacity  for  knowing  God, — 
it  is  always,  after  all,  in  advance  of  the  child, 
always  at  the  same  time  satisfying  and  stimulating 
its  enlarging  powers,  fulfilling,  not  destroying,  as 
our  Lord  said.  So  the  Old  Testament  always 
presents  itself  to  the  children  as  a  book  the  chief 
function  of  which  is  to  make  them  good.  As 
Matthew  Arnold  says,  the  book  is  pervaded  by  a 
noble  "passion  for  righteousness,"  a  passion  as 
vigorous  and  compelling  to-day  as  it  was  three 
thousand  years  ago. 

Just  here,  I  fancy,  some  of  my  readers  will  part 


36  Telling  Bible  Storiei 

company  with  me.  They  are  thinking  of  Abra- 
ham's sacrifice  of  Isaac,  of  Lot's  willingness  to 
debase  his  daughters  to  save  the  honor  of  a  guest, 
and  of  Joshua's  attempt  to  exterminate  the  Canaan- 
ites,  and  they  do  not  find  that  it  meets  the  diffi- 
culty to  admit  that  the  Old  Testament  portrays 
man  in  his  elemental  nature,  and  not  as  the  pro- 
duct of  generations  of  a  more  or  less  artificial 
civilization.  It  may,  perhaps,  help  them  over  the 
difficulty  to  search  for  the  moral  ideas  inherent  in 
these  stories.  Is  not  the  impulse  to  heroic  self- 
sacrifice  the  very  first  motive  of  intense  love  ?  Is 
not  the  claim  of  hospitality  proved  by  the  entire 
history  of  primitive  peoples  to  be  the  first  of  all 
social  claims,  transcending  even  the  tie  of  blood  ? 
And  is  the  impulse  to  destroy  those  who  are  not 
of  one's  own  religious  faith,  those  who  do  not 
worship  our  God,  entirely  wanting  in  the  Christian 
heart?  Whence  come  denominational  exclusive- 
ness  and  trials  for  heresy  ?  To  quote  again  from 
the  Rev.  Newton  Hall :  "  It  might  be  considered 
questionable  taste  on  the  part  of  scholars  who 
belong  to  nations  which  believe  in  expansion  by 
means  of  the  Gatling  gun  and  repeating  rifle  to 
criticise  the  ethical  tone  of  the  Old  Testament. 
The  campaigns  of  Joshua  and  the  exploits  of  the 
allies  in  China  would  compare  well  in  parallel 
columns.  The  hosts  of  Christendom  could  even 


The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  31 

give  the  Israelite  warriors  points  on  the  artistic 
finish  of  certain  forms  of  atrocity.  .  .  .  The  Bible 
student  will  find,  however,  together  with  the 
horrors  of  war,  a  passion  for  holiness,  a  simplicity, 
a  tenderness,  a  faith,  unmatched  in  history.  .  .  . 
When  this  study  is  made  with  sympathy,  it  will  be 
found  that  the  Bible  is  the  faithful  record  of  the 
struggle  of  two  adverse  forces,  the  human  nature, 
savage,  brutal,  domineering  ;  the  divine  nature, 
at  work  upon  the  lower  force,  with  infinite  per- 
sistence and  patience.  The  story  is  of  a  divine 
evolutionary  force  steadily  making  for  righteous- 
ness. If  your  history  of  the  movement  is  to  be 
truthful,  you  can  no  more  leave  out  the  hoof  and 
claw  and  nail  than  you  can  leave  out  the  holy 
aspiration  which  sought  God  and  found  him." 

The  low  ethical  standards  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment characters  have  far  too  often  been  made, 
by  those  who  ought  to  know  better,  an  excuse 
for  neglecting  the  book.  The  excuse  is  utterly 
superficial.  We  do  not  so  judge  modern  writers, 
nor  refuse  to  read  books  embodying  characters 
whose  ethics  we  repudiate.  Alas  !  we  do  not 
always  refuse  them  to  our  children. 

The  value  of  the  Old  Testament  is  not  that 
certain  things  are  excluded  from  it,  but  that  God 
is  always  in  it.  So  we  return  to  the  proposition 
that  it  is  especially  valuable  for  children,  because 


38  Telling  Bible  Stories 

it  introduces  God  to  them  from  their  own  point 
of  view.  The  Hebrew  intellectuality  most  closely 
resembles  that  of  a  child,  —  his  mental  activity 
small,  his  spiritual  susceptibility  deep,  and  his 
physical  sensibility  acute.  The  Hebrew  made 
no  analysis  of  life  ;  like  the  little  child,  he  took 
it  as  he  found  it,  without  self-consciousness  or 
worldly  aspiration.  The  Hebrew  idea  of  God 
in  the  early  stages  of  Hebrew  history  was  very 
crude,  but  it  was  very  true.  It  was  the  child's 
idea  of  his  father,  —  of  course  he  is  the  greatest 
man  in  the  country  !  We  smile  at  this  ancient 
Hebrew  conception,  because  our  study  of  anthro- 
pology makes  us  precisely  understand  the  origin 
of  the  Hebrew  God-idea.  It  would  be  good  for 
us  to  go  back  sometimes  and  think  the  thoughts 
of  our  children  after  them.  It  would  hardly 
be  a  less  marvellous  achievement  than  that  of 
Kepler,  when,  discovering  the  three  great  laws  of 
the  starry  heavens,  he  exclaimed  in  a  transport 
of  holy  awe,  "I  think  thy  thoughts  after  thee, 
O  God!" 

For  all  the  mother's  study  of  the  child  nature, 
whether  in  the  Old  Testament  or  in  the  precious 
lives  which  God  has  put  into  her  arms,  must 
bring  her  back  to  our  Lord's  assertion  that  "of 
such,"  and  not  of  the  culture  or  the  scientific 
attainments  or  the  works  of  piety  of  grown-up 


'  The  Old  Testament  and  the  Child  39 

Christians,  but  of  such  as  is  the  little  child,  is 
the  kingdom  of  God.  Not  the  theologian  but  the 
mother  must  restore  the  Old  Testament  to  the 
coming  age.  As  the  affectionate  but  philistine 
championship  of  "  our  old  mother's  Bible "  has 
done  more  to  undermine  its  authority  and  sus- 
pend its  use  than  any  criticism,  however  destruc- 
tive, so  it  is  the  bright  and  cultivated  young 
mothers  of  to-day,  with  the  little  children  in- 
trusted to  their  care,  who  must  bring  back  to  the 
American  people  that  God-consciousness  which 
is  the  priceless  gift  of  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  MORNING  STORIES 


IN  telling  Bible  stories  to  the  children,  or,  in 
fact,  in  telling  them  any  stories,  the  important 
preliminary  is  to  get  the  children's  point  of  view. 
Happily,  this  is  above  all  things  easy  with  the 
Old  Testament  stories,  because,  as  has  been  seen, 
the  child's  viewpoint  is  precisely  their  view- 
point. As  the  morning  light  of  life  is  reflected 
from  the  face  of  the  little  child,  so  the  stories  of 
the  Old  Testament,  especially  its  oldest  stories, 
which  we  find  in  Genesis,  reflect  the  morning 
light  of  the  world.  That  blind  preacher,  Dr. 
George  Matheson,  of  Edinburgh,  whose  spiritual 
insight  seems  to  have  grown  brighter  as  the  outer 
world  has  grown  dark  around  him,  lately  wrote, 
—  perhaps  with  Herder's  saying  in  mind,  —  that 
the  Bible  stories  belong  to  the  early  hour  of  the 
day,  because  they  are  portraits  painted  by  the 
morning  light.  Therefore,  that  mother  is  very 
happy  whose  circumstances  permit  her  to  gather 
her  little  ones  around  her  in  the  early  morning, 

40 


The  Morning  Storiet  41 

to  give  consecration  and  meaning  to  the  plays 
and  the  little  duties  and  trials  of  the  day,  by 
telling  them  a  Bible  story.  Perhaps  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  family  prayers  may  lie  here, 
especially  in  country  homes.  The  hurried  break- 
fast over,  and  father  and  older  children  sent  away 
to  business  and  to  school,  why  should  not  the 
mother  ransom  from  the  complicated  occupations 
of  her  own  day,  a  few  minutes  for  the  spiritual 
sunshine  of  the  very  little  ones  ?  Happy  the 
nursery  into  which  the  consciousness  of  God's 
presence  comes  with  the  morning  sunlight  I 

Morning  stories  are  these  Old  Testament  stories 
also,  because  of  the  freshness  of  their  nature  feel- 
ing. We  find  this  in  the  very  first  chapters  of 
Genesis,  and  it  grows  upon  us  in  the  patriarch 
and  hero  tales  and  some  of  the  later  stories. 
And  as  in  all  childlike  natures  delight  in  the 
sensible  world  is  closely  allied  with  high  spiritual 
exaltation,  so  it  was  with  the  Hebrew  people. 
Clearly,  it  was  because  the  childhood  of  this 
people  was  perennial,  lasting  on  through  genera- 
tions, that  their  spiritual  capacity  became  so  deep. 
"  Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy."  To  the 
Hebrew  it  was  ever  close  at  hand.1  It  was  no 
strange  thing  to  him  that  messengers  of  God  came 

1 1  have  borrowed  this  and  what  immediately  follows  from  my 
"  Hebrew  Life  and  Thought."  University  of  Chicago  Press. 


42  Telling  Bible  Stories 

and  went  familiarly  between  earth  and  that  near 
sky  in  which  God  dwelt,  like  the  shepherd  who 
guards  his  sheep,  spreading  out  the  heavens  as  a 
tent  to  dwell  in.1  It  was  as  much  in  the  natural 
order  as  any  other  event  of  life.  The  Hebrew 
had  no  more  a  conception  of  natural  law  than  a 
child  has,  and  he  received  the  miraculous  inter- 
ventions of  God  in  his  daily  life  as  a  child  re- 
ceived his  father's  gifts,  not  with  surprise  or  a 
sense  of  mystery,  but  as  his  way  of  looking  after 
the  well-being  of  his  child. 

We  have  already  seen  that  this  is  one  reason 
why  the  Old  Testament  is  so  important  a  book 
for  the  child;  that  it  puts  him  from  the  first  into 
normal  relations  with  God.  It  is  even  more  valu- 
able to  the  growing  boy  and  girl,  not  only  as 
a  means  for  keeping  them  in  these  relations,  but 
also  as  a  key  to  human  nature  and  to  the  ways  of 
man  with  God.  For  these  purposes  those  won- 
der tales  of  the  Bible  which  we  find  so  impossible 
to  square  with  our  scientific  knowledge,  and 
therefore  feel  tempted  to  slur  over,  are  most  im- 
portant. The  scientific  teaching  of  the  school  of 
to-day  soon  brings  the  growing  boys  and  girls  to 
doubt  or  deny  the  possibility  of  miracle,  unless 
as  little  children  they  instinctively  received  the 
high  spiritual  impression  of  these  wonder  tales 
1  Isaiah  xl.  22. 


The  Morning  Stories  43 

and  have  been  gradually  led  to  apprehend  their 
meaning  by  that  "  graded  system "  of  telling 
Bible  stories  presently  to  be  described.  To  chil- 
dren thus  taught  it  will  be  a  simple  thing  to  ex- 
plain the  significance  of  miracle  as  they  come  to 
the  study  of  mythology  in  school,  and  about  the 
same  time  to  the  elementary  study  of  physics. 
It  will  be  easy  to  show  them  that  just  as  myth  is 
the  instinctive  attempt  of  all  peoples  to  explain 
the  processes  of  nature,  so  with  the  Hebrew 
people,  who  so  vividly  realized  God  in  all  their 
lives,  miracle  was  the  natural  way  of  explaining 
those  wonderful  events  in  their  own  experience, 
or  in  that  of  their  nation,  which  were  out  of  the 
ordinary  course  of  things,  and  for  which  they 
could  find  no  other  explanation.  To  the  youth 
thus  taught  in  childhood,  the  argument  against 
the  Bible  that  "  miracles  simply  do  not  happen  " 
will  be  as  irrelevant  as  it  is  obviously  untrue. 
From  the  Hebrew  point  of  view  they  do  happen, 
they  happen  to  all  of  us  ;  and  the  experiences  of 
his  own  life  are  least  inexplicable  to  the  man  who, 
early  acquainted  with  these  stories  which,  more 
than  any  others  in  the  world's  literature,  give 
a  true  impression  of  the  character  of  God,  has 
come  to  understand  the  cardinal  teaching  of 
Jesus,  that  he  who  does  not  receive  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  as  a  little  child  cannot  enter  therein. 


44  Telling  Bible  Storiet 


II 

A  recent  writer  on  our  present  subject  lays 
rather  strong  emphasis  on  the  theory  that  in  tell- 
ing the  children  Bible  stories  one  should  select 
first  those  that  have  to  do  with  children,  begin- 
ning with  the  childhood  of  Jesus,  going  on  to  the 
stories  of  little  Samuel  and  the  boy  Joseph,  and 
perhaps  the  young  king  Josiah  and  the  Greek- 
Hebrew  boy  Timothy,  who  knew  the  Scriptures 
"from  a  child,"  and  afterward  taking  up  the 
narratives  that  relate  to  older  people.  There  is 
something  in  the  idea,  for  it  is  almost  a  psycho- 
logical law  that  people  of  whatever  age  are  chiefly 
interested  in  other  people  of  their  own  age.  A 
gray-haired  woman  is  impressed  if  not  solaced  by 
observing  that  nearly  all  the  women  she  meets  are 
becoming  gray;  young  girls  can  give  every  detail 
of  the  dress  of  the  girls  they  meet ;  and  young 
matrons  are  naturally  drawn  to  the  matrons  of 
their  own  standing.  Especially  is  this  the  case 
with  the  child.  In  the  company  of  a  score  of 
people  the  two  who  are  children,  even  though 
strangers  to  one  another,  will  be  oblivious  of  the 
presence  of  any  persons  except  their  two  little 
selves.  So  far  as  this  is  true  the  method  proposed 
might  be  of  value  —  I  am  not  sure  that  it  would 


The  Morning  Stories  45 

be  —  if  the  Bible  actually  were,  as  many  are 
gravely  insisting,  simply  a  book  like  other  books; 
but  its  character  as  the  sacred  literature  of  a 
child  people  precludes  the  necessity  of  this  prin- 
ciple of  selection.  All  the  stories  are  indeed  not 
equally  well  adapted  to  children  of  various  ages, 
but  the  test  of  their  suitability  is  certainly  not 
the  age  of  the  hero  of  any  one  of  them.  In  fact, 
generations  of  experience  have  established  the 
contention  that  no  stories  between  the  covers  of 
the  Bible  make  such  quick  appeal  to  the  very 
little  child  as  those  which  we  find  in  the  early 
chapters  of  the  book  of  Genesis,  those  "morning 
stories,"  which  we  have  now  to  consider. 

To  the  thoughtful  reader,  who  has  penetrated 
the  almost  unfathomable  religious  and  theological 
meaning  of  these  stories,  this  must  be  a  matter  of 
surprise,  unless  he  also  apprehends  their  literary 
character,  the  literary  class  to  which  they  belong. 
For  assuredly,  no  child  mind  can  possibly  fathom 
to  their  depths  the  theological  and  psychological 
meaning  of  these  narratives.  No  child  mind  could 
apprehend  anything  of  their  meaning  were  it  not 
clothed  in  precisely  the  form  of  that  class  of 
stories  which  most  strongly  appeals  to  him,  — 
the  form,  that  is,  of  folk-lore. 

Let  not  the  word  awaken  surprise  or  arrest  of 
sympathy.  A  moment's  consideration  will  show 


46  Telling  Bible  Stories 

us  that  these  stories  must  at  least  have  been  folk- 
lore at  one  time,  for,  at  whatever  date  they  were 
written,  they  must  in  the  nature  of  things  have 
been,  either  a  pure  invention  of  the  writer,  or  else 
stories  handed  down  from  lip  to  lip.  They  cer- 
tainly must  have  been  thus  handed  down  for  many 
hundreds  of  years  before  Moses,  if  he  it  was,  or 
any  one  else,  committed  them  to  paper,  and  this 
is  folk-lore.  Even  a  superficial  study  must  show 
that  they  are  folk-lore  still.1 

As  one  who  tells  Bible  stories  to  a  child  must 

1  An  illustration  of  the  development  of  folk-lore  from  tradi- 
tion is  given  by  a  comparison  of  the  canonical  with  the  Apocry- 
phal Gospels.  The  first  three  Gospels  in  the  New  Testament 
give  unmistakable  evidence  of  being  based  upon  a  widespread 
and  carefully  formulated  oral  account  of  the  sayings  and  doings 
of  Christ.  They  were  committed  to  writing  (writing  being 
then  a  commonly  practised  art)  before  these  memories  of  Jesus 
had  degenerated  into  fanciful  legend.  How  fanciful  were  the 
legends  into  which  oral  traditions  did  degenerate  in  regions 
to  which  the  canonical  Gospels  did  not  early  penetrate,  is  made 
interestingly  evident  in  a  recent  publication,  — "The  Apocryphal 
and  Legendary  Life  of  Christ,"  by  J.  de  Q.  Donehoo  (Mac- 
millan) .  In  it  are  woven  together,  in  a  series  of  consecutive 
chapters,  all  that  can  now  be  rescued  of  widely  accepted  stories 
about  Jesus,  current  in  the  early  centuries  in  regions  into  which 
the  authorized  Gospels  were  slow  to  penetrate.  In  most  cases 
they  were  kept  from  actually  becoming  folk-lore  by  the  event- 
ual dissemination  and  the  intrinsic  authority  of  the  Gospels. 
How  near  they  came  to  becoming  folk-lore,  the  history  of 
Christian  art  makes  clear. 


The  Morning  Stories  47 

for  the  time  being  see  things  as  a  child  sees  them, 
must  think,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  with  the 
heart  of  a  child,  so  it  is  of  no  less  vital  importance 
to  beware  of  reading  into  these  stories  anything 
which  the  child  will  one  day  have  to  unlearn.  L 
Not  that  we  should  practise  what  our  Roman 
Catholic  brethren  call  "the  economy  of  truth. " 
On  the  contrary,  we  should  above  all  things  take 
care  to  be  profoundly  and  unswervingly  truthful ; 
but  we  should  not  attempt  to  teach  a  little  child 
all  the  deep  significance  of  any  of  these  narratives. 
We  should  simply  tell  the  stories,  taking  especial 
care  not  to  weave  into  them  anything  that  is  not 
there,  while  we  delay  till  a  more  mature  age  the 
task  of  unfolding  to  them  much  that  our  maturer 
experience  and  study  have  shown  to  be  there. 
Telling  Bible  stories,  as  has  already  been  sug- 
gested, must  be  to  some  extent  a  graded  system, 
and  it  is  the  purpose  of  this  book  to  show  how 
largely  a  graded  system  of  story  telling  may  be 
made  to  subserve  the  spiritual  development  of  the 
boy  and  girl.  And  it  is  to  develop  them  spirit-  - 
ually,  not  to  store  their  intellects,  that  we  tell 
them  Bible  stories. 

To  the  very  little  child  the  story  should  simply 
be  told  as  the  folk-tale  that  it  is,  with  no  thought 
of  whether  it  is  or  is  not  true,  or  in  what  sense  it 
is  true,  or  what  it  means.  Tp  my  mind  it  is  a 


48  Telling  Bible  Stories 

great  error,  which  does  not  in  the  least  meet  the 
true  requirements  of  criticism,  even  supposing  that 
criticism  had  anything  to  do  with  the  children's 
Biblical  knowledge,  to  treat  the  early  narratives 
of  Genesis  as  Professor  Bennett  has  done  is  his 
otherwise  valuable  book,  "  Bible  Stories  retold  for 
Children."  He  begins  where  most  conservative  as 
well  as  all  advanced  scholars  agree  that  authentic 
history  begins,  with  the  Exodus  ;  and  at  the  close 
of  the  history  he  adds  a  chapter  of  the  early  narra- 
tives of  Genesis  as  "  some  of  the  stories  which  had 
been  handed  down  from  the  ancients."  But  this 
method  robs  these  stories  of  their  most  precious 
character.  There  is  far  more  in  them  than  in 
ordinary  folk-lore,  and  their  meaning  is  of  another 
order.  The  tiny  child  has  no  use  for  the  mean- 
ing of  either.  Let  him  hear  the  Bible  stories  as 
he  hears  fairy  tales  and  nursery  rhymes  and  "  Uncle 
Remus  "  and  Tennyson.  He  will  feel  the  difference, 
because  God  is  in  all  these  and  not  in  those,  —  not 
even  in  poetry  as  it  is  in  these  stories,  —  and  his 
soul  spontaneously  rushes  forth  to  meet  God  wher- 
ever he  finds  him.  The  mischief  is  not  in  giving 
him  these  stories  in  his  earliest  years  as  true,  but 
in  not  showing  him  what  is  their  truth,  as  he 
becomes  able  to  receive  it.  It  is  essential  that 
they  should  become  familiar  stories,  a  part  of  his 
mental  make-up,  before  he  is  old  enough  for  the 


The  Morning  Storit*  49 

interpretation.  When  he  has  heard  a  story  so 
often  that  every  detail  is  perfectly  familiar  to 
him,  when  he  "  knows  it  by  heart,"  in  the  best 
sense  of  the  words,  then,  when  he  is  about  five 
years  old,  one  may  begin  to  unfold  to  him  its 
marvellous  meaning.  And  this  unfolding  may 
be  a  gradual  process,  lasting  over  years  of  the 
child's  life,  and  making  the  story  more  wonderful 
and  interesting  as  years  go  on.  Thus  he  will  be 
prepared  to  learn,  at  the  proper  age,  how  the  story 
came  to  be  what  it  is,  and  why,  and  thus,  side  by 
side  with  his  growing  apprehension  of  God,  and 
of  his  own  relation  to  God,  he  will  by  degrees 
learn  something  of  the  true  character  of  the  Bible 
as  a  revelation  of  God.  And  thus  the  mother 
may  avoid  that  very  easy,  and  —  alas  !  —  very  dis- 
astrous mistake  of  giving  the  child  a  false  notion 
of  what  the  Bible  is  as  revelation.  Revelation  is 
certainly  not  a  communication  of  facts  otherwise 
not  discoverable  by  human  intelligence,  though  so 
enlightened  and  thoughtful  a  man  as  Dr.  Horton 
of  London  did  say  so. l  It  is  rather  a  communi- 
cation of  the  Spirit  of  God 2  ;  and  the  earlier 
we  make  our  children  understand  this,  the  more 
rewarding  will  be  our  own  work  with  them. 
I  have  already  quoted  Matthew  Arnold  as  saying 

1  "  Revelation  and  the  Bible,"  by  R.  F.  Horton,  D.D. 
*  Edmond  Stapler. 


50  Telling  Bible  Stories 

that  the  Bible  is  pervaded  by  a  noble  sense  of 
righteousness  and  an  intense  belief  in  the  reality 
of  a  moral  order  in  the  world.  This  is  particu- 
larly the  case  in  the  earliest  narratives  in  Genesis, 
our  "morning  stories."  If  we  can  make  the  chil- 
dren early  understand  the  truth  about  the  Bible, 
they  will  be  in  no  danger  of  making  a  fetich  of  it, 
on  the  one  hand,  nor,  on  the  other,  of  committing 
the  capital  blunder  of  supposing  that  truth  is 
identical  with  fact,  and  hazarding  their  confidence 
in  the  Bible  with  every  new  discovery  of  advancing 
science. 

Matthew  Arnold  gave  an  important  clue  to  the 
character  of  the  Old  Testament  when  he  said  that 
with  the  Hebrews,  as  shown  in  all  its  pages,  re- 
ligion was  not  a  part  but  the  whole  of  life.  This 
explains  St.  Paul's  charge  against  the  heathen, 
that  God  was  not  in  all  their  thoughts.  That  He 
was  in  some  of  them,  had  some  part  in  their  life, 
was  not  to  be  disputed,  but  this  did  not  suffice. 
All  life,  to  the  Hebrew,  was  religious,  and  it  is 
this  point  of  view  that  makes  the  Old  Testament 
so  valuable  a  book  for  children.  When  we  come 
to  discover  in  it  not  only  poetry  and  prophecy, 
parable  and  proverb,  but  humor  and  sarcasm,  pun 
and  fable,  yes,  and  fiction  and  folk-lore  and  myth, 
—  for  all  these  are  in  the  Old  Testament,  —  then 
we  must  perceive  that  it  was  just  because  God 


The  Morning  Stories  51 

was  in  all  the  thoughts  of  the  Hebrew  writers 
that  they  found  no  incongruity  in  bringing  all 
sorts  of  things  into  Scripture.  The  superior  and 
unique  religious  value  of  the  Old  Testament  over 
the  religious  books  of  other  nations,  however 
advanced  in  thought  and  aspiration,  is  not  that 
certain  things  are  excluded  from  it,  —  the  more 
we  study  it  the  more  amazed  we  become  on  finding 
that  nothing  is  excluded  from  it, —  but  that  God 
is  everywhere  in  it,  whatever  may  be  the  literary 
form  in  which  the  thought  of  God  is  clothed. 
The  Hebrew  muse,  as  a  French  writer  1  says,  is 
always  religious.  Moses  the  first  poet  is  brother 
of  Aaron  the  first  priest. 

The  first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis  contain  a 
series  of  most  valuable  stories.  They  are  not  his- 
tory, and  the  great  difficulty  with  the  theology  of 
all  churches  is  that  they  have  been  read  and 
explained  as  history,  the  theologians  of  the  early 
Church  not  having  apprehended  the  value  of  the 
story  as  a  means  of  imparting  religious  truth.  It 
would  seem  as  if  they  might  have  learned  it,  not 
only  from  our  Lord,  but  from  the  prophets,  from 
Nathan  down.  Many  modern  writers  have  made 
this  discovery,  notably  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  in 
his  Christmas  story  of  "  The  Other  Wise  Man," 
included  in  the  volume  entitled  "  The  Blue 
1  Plantin. 


52  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

Flower."  But  the  early  stories  of  Genesis  are 
supremely  valuable  to  this  end,  because  it  was 
the  special  function  of  Israel1  "to  set  forth  a 
knowledge  of  the  righteous  action  of  a  righteous 
God  and  of  the  right  human  attitude  to  Him." 
These  narratives  show  God  active  in  the  natural 
world,  in  the  world  of  human  action,  and  in  each 
soul  of  man;  and  though  it  is  certain  that  those 
who  handed  down  these  tales  did  not  understand 
God  as  the  prophets  and  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
understood  Him,  yet  it  was  the  same  God,  and  not 
another,  whom  they  knew.  And  we  must  bear 
in  mind,  especially  in  teaching  the  children,  that 
it  is  God,  not  the  Bible,  who  is  the  object  of  our 
faith. 

Ill 

Genesis  ii.  4b— 25 

Let  us  open  the  Bible  at  the  second  chapter  of 
Genesis,  leaving  the  first  for  a  later  moment,  and 
imagine  ourselves  telling  a  child  of  three  years 
the  story  which  begins  with  the  second  part  of 
verse  four.  In  telling  it  we  remember  that  a  story 
is  not  history,  and  that  the  difference  between 
them  is  not  that  one  may  be  fictitious  and  the 
other  is  true,  but  that  the  one  appeals  to  tha 
1  Henry  Osborn  Taylor,  "  Ancient  Ideals." 


o  we 
tell-  I 
It 


The  Morning  Storie*  53 

imagination  and  the  emotions  and  the  other  to 
the  sense  of  record  and  of  scientific  explanation, 
not  yet  awake  in  the  child's  mind,  though  soon 
to  awaken  there.  Evidently,  therefore,  the  ques- 
tion whether  or  not  the  story  is  true  is  not  at  all 
to  the  point.  The  point  with  any  story,  true  or 
fictitious,  as  Dr.  Sanders  has  said,  is,  What  do  we 
get  out  of  it?  Is  it  a  good  story  and  worth  the 
ing  ?  This  Genesis  story  surely  meets  the  test 
is  a  good  story.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  or 
invent  any  story  with  a  wider  horizon,  one  more 
enlarging  to  the  little  mind,  or  which  more  beauti- 
fully sets  the  constructive  imagination  at  work. 
As  we  all  know,  it  is  the  story  of  the  creation  of 
man,  or,  as  some  writer  has  called  it, 

THE  STORY  OF   THE  FIRST-BO  EN 

Once  upon  a  time  this  world  in  which  we  live 
was  not  like  what  it  is  now.  There  were  no  grass 
or  trees  or  flowers.  There  was  nobody  living  on 
the  earth  to  take  care  of  the  grass  and  the  flowers. 
There  had  never  been  any  rain  to  make  the 
flowers  grow.  Then  God  made  a  soft  warm  mist 
to  come,  just  as  it  comes  now  sometimes,  in  the 
summer  mornings.  And  the  mist  made  the 
ground  soft  and  warm,  so  that  the  little  seeds 
could  grow.  For  God  had  hidden  away  many 


54  Telling  Bible  Stories 

little  seeds  in  the  earth,  and  they  were  waiting 
till  He  sent  His  mist  to  call  them  to  spring  up 
and  make  grass  and  flowers. 

Now  God  loved  the  grass  and  flowers  that  were 
going  to  grow  up  from  the  seeds,  and  He  didn't 
want  them  to  grow  untended;  so  He  took  some 
dust  of  the  earth  and  made  a  man,  and  He  breathed 
into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life,  and  man  became 
a  living  soul.  And  the  man  was  God's  dear 
child,  because  God  had  breathed  a  soul  into  him. 
Every  little  child  and  every  grown  person  has  a 
soul,  and  so  we  are  all  God's  dear  children. 

Then  God  made  a  beautiful  garden,  to  be  a 
lovely  home  for  that  man.  There  was  a  great 
river  flowing  through  the  garden  to  keep  it  fresh 
and  cool,  and  the  garden  was  full  of  trees  and 
flowers  and  plants,  pleasant  to  the  sight  and  good 
for  food.  And  the  tree  of  life  was  in  that  gar- 
den, and  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil.  God  used  to  come  to  that  garden  to  be  with 
the  man,  and  the  man  was  very  happy,  taking 
care  of  the  grass  and  the  flowers  and  the  trees, 
and  talking  with  his  father,  God.  He  ate  the 
fruit  that  grew  in  the  garden.  He  might  eat  any 
kind  of  fruit  he  liked,  except  that  which  grew  on 
one  tree.  That  was  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil.  God  had  told  him  not  to  eat  any 
of  its  fruit,  for  He  wanted  to  teach  him  to  obey. 


The  Morning  Stories  55 

The  man  did  not  want  to  eat  the  fruit  of  the 
knowledge-of-good-and-evil  tree,  for  he  loved  to 
obey  his  father,  God. 

But  the  man  was  alone  in  that  garden,  and  God 
said,  "  It  is  not  good  that  the  man  should  be  alone, 
I  will  make  a  help-mate  for  him."  So  first  of  all 
God  made  the  beasts,  —  cows  and  horses  and  dogs 
and  cats  and  all  the  animals,  —  and  He  brought 
them  to  the  man  and  asked  him  to  name  them, 
for  God  likes  to  have  us  help  Him,  just  as  mother 
likes  to  have  you  help  her.  The  man's  name  was 
Adam.  So  Adam  got  acquainted  with  all  the 
animals  and  he  gave  them  all  names,  just  as  you 
name  kitty  and  doggy  and  the  horse  and  the 
chickens  sometimes,  and  the  birds  that  you  like 
best.  Adam  must  have  been  glad  to  have  the 
animals  near  him  in  the  lovely  garden. 

And  yet  Adam  sometimes  wished  for  somebody 
else  to  be  with  him  besides  the  cow  or  the  horse. 
Even  the  kitty  and  the  dog  did  not  always  satisfy 
him  ;  he  wanted  God  to  give  him  some  one  like 
himself  to  live  with  him,  just  as  you  want  God  to 
send  you  a  baby  sister  or  brother. 

One  day  God  made  the  man  fall  sound  asleep, 
so  sound  asleep  that  he  did  not  know  what  was 
happening.  Then  God  took  a  part  of  Adam's  side, 
one  of  his  ribs,  and  made  a  woman  of  that  rib. 
When  Adam  waked  up  there  was  the  woman  God 


56  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

had  made  to  be  with  him  !  Do  you  not  think 
Adam  must  have  been  glad  to  see  her?  And 
when  he  knew  that  this  woman  was  a  part  of  his 
very  own  self,  and  a  child  of  God,  just  as  he  was, 
he  loved  her  very  much.  He  said,  "  She  is  bone 
of  my  bone  and  flesh  of  my  flesh  !  "  No  creature 
could  be  nearer  and  dearer  to  him  than  that. 
Adam  was  very  glad  to  have  the  woman  to  be 
his  true  companion,  just  as  your  little  brother  or 
sister  is  more  truly  your  companion  than  doggy 
or  kitty.  Adam  called  the  woman  Eve,  and 
Adam  and  Eve  lived  together  in  that  beautiful 
garden.  They  were  very  happy,  for  they  loved 
to  take  care  of  the  garden,  and  they  loved  one 
another,  and  they  loved  God. 

Such  a  story  as  this  may  be  told  to  the  young- 
est child  that  understands  language,  and  its  little 
soul  will  be  filled  with  beautiful  imaginings  upon 
which  it  may  feed  for  all  time  to  come,  and  which 
will  never  need  to  be  revised  or  corrected.  For 
though  it  will  later  learn  in  school  some  things 
which  are  not  in  this  story  about  the  origin  of  the 
physical  earth  and  of  man,  it  will  learn  nothing 
which  contradicts  this  story,  which  is  a  true  story 
though  not  a  narrative  of  fact.  By  this  one 
story,  oft  and  oft  repeated,  as  the  child  demands 
that  every  story  should  be,  its  little  mind  comet 


The  Morning  Storie*  5T 

to  grasp  great  fundamental  truths  :  that  every- 
thing that  goes  on  in  this  world  is  due  to  the 
initiative  and  the  continued  interest  of  God ; 
that  the  loving  sympathy  of  God  extends  even  to 
inanimate  nature,  of  which  trees  and  grass  and 
flowers  are  a  symbol  ;  that  man  is  in  a  special 
sense  a  child  of  God  ;  that  God  loves  to  have, 
and  in  a  sense  needs,  his  help  ;  that  people  are 
bound  together  in  peculiarly  dear  relations  be- 
cause they  are  all  children  of  God.  The  creative 
power  of  God,  His  providence  as  the  expression 
of  His  being,  which  is  love,  the  filial  relation  of 
man  to  his  Maker,  and  the  solidarity  of  the  human 
race  are  all  unfolded  in  this  little  folk-tale  which 
a  very  baby  enjoys.  Have  we  not  here  all  the 
framework  that  is  needed  for  the  larger  and  ever 
larger  instruction  of  the  growing  child  ?  Within 
this  framework  no  truth  of  physical  science,  of 
theology,  or  of  social  ethics  need  find  itself 
cramped  or  contradicted. 

Who  can  imagine  a  more  delightful  exercise 
than  that  of  gradually  unfolding  to  the  eager, 
unspoiled  mind  of  the  growing  boy  or  girl  the 
great  truths  that  lie  here  in  embryo  ?  So  doing, 
the  mother  will  never  make  the  mistake  of  teach- 
ing her  child  that  this  story  is  a  narrative  of  his- 
toric fact  which  he  must  believe,  or  reject  the 
authority  of  the  Bible.  The  great  truths  which 


58  Telling  Bible  Stories 

it   embodies    have    overshadowed   the   relatively 
trivial  question  of  fact,  and  there  will  be  no  diffi- 
culty in  admitting  to  the  boy  that  which  he  will, 
instinctively  have  perceived,  —  that  its  charactei 
and  its  construction   show  it  to  be  an  old  folk- 
tale,  told   by  mothers   to  their   children   and  by 
heads  of  clans  to  their  followers  for  generations 
before  the  art  of  writing  came  into  existence. 

Happily,  this  account  of  creation  in  the  second 
chapter  of  Genesis  has  never  been  made  a  matter 
of  orthodox  belief.  It  fundamentally  differs  from 
the  first  chapter  in  its  conception  of  creation,  as  I 
am  sure  the  reader  has  perceived,  perhaps  for  the 
first  time.  The  first  chapter,  besides  its  vantage 
of  position,  is  so  marvellous  a  piece  of  literature, 
so  grand  in  its  diction,  so  profound  in  its  sim- 
plicity, that  it  must  almost  inevitably  have 
crowded  the  other  story  out  from  the  field  of 
vision  as  a  narrative  of  creation.  My  readers 
were  probably  taught  in  Sunday-school  that  the 
second  chapter  is  an  amplification  of  some  parts  of 
the  first,  but  it  is  hardly  necessary  here  to  con- 
travene such  a  statement.  Not  only  is  the  exist- 
ence of  the  world  taken  for  granted  in  the  second 
chapter,  not  viewed  as  called  into  being  by  the 
creative  word  of  God,  as  in  the  first,  but  the  origi- 
nal earth  is  conceived  of  as  dry  and  waterless,  not 
a  chaotic  mass  of  waters;  man  is  created  before 


The  Morning  Stories  59 

the  animals  and  even  before  vegetation,  and  he  is 
not  created  male  and  female,  as  in  the  first  chap- 
ter, but  man  alone,  and  woman  made  from  himself 
to  be  his  companion,  only  after  he  has  found  the 
companionship  of  the  animals  inadequate  to  make 
him  happy.  What  more  impressive  protest  could 
possibly  have  been  given  to  man  against  regard- 
ing woman  as  a  mere  beast  of  burden  and  minister 
to  gratification  ?  What  more  impressive  teaching 
can  be  ingrained  in  the  consciousness  of  the  de- 
veloping boy  ?  "  Something  better  than  his  dog, 
a  little  dearer  than  his  horse  "  ?  Nay,  but  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,  as  let  man  never  forget 
that  he  himself  was  made.  Let  no  one  who 
tells  Bible  stories  stultify  the  child's  intelligence 
by  confusing  these  clear  distinctions  or  defraud 
his  moral  sense  by  ignoring  these  far-reaching 
implications. 

IV 

Genesis  i.  1— ii.  4« 

The  consummate  value  of  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  is  entirely  other  than  that  of  any  subse- 
quent story  in  these  first  eleven  chapters,  and  it 
appeals  to  a  different  set  of  powers  in  the  child's 
mind.  Yet  there  is  no  reason  why  this  chapter 
should  not  be  told  to  the  very  youngest  children, 


60  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

if  only  it  is  told  as  another  story,  and  no  attempt 
is  made  to  weave  the  two  into  one.  In  fact  it  is 
another  story.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  a 
grander  appeal  to  the  child's  noblest  possession, 
the  faculty  of  constructive  imagery,  than  that  of 
the  first  two  verses  of  this  chapter,  —  God  inde- 
pendent of  all  things,  God  creating  all  things,  not 
by  a  majestic  word,  but  by  long  loving  brooding 
over  these  primal  elements  which  he  has  called 
into  being.  There  is  room  in  this  story  for  that 
evolutionary  hypothesis  which  is  now  generally 
accepted,  and  which,  however  much  it  may  and 
doubtless  will  be  modified  with  the  progress  of 
thought  and  discovery,  will  probably  persist  in  its 
fundamental  elements.  And  I  know  two  little 
children  four  years  old,  whose  eyes  sparkle  and 
grow  dark,  and  whose  breath  draws  deep,  as  they 
tell  how  once  upon  a  time  every  place  and  every 
place  all  through  the  sky  was  full  of  star  dust, 
and  how  God  set  it  whirling  and  whirling  until 
first  one  round  world  whirled  off  and  went  dancing 
along  the  path  that  God  had  bidden  it  follow,  and 
then  another  and  another  and  another,  until  all  the 
sky  was  full  of  whirling  worlds,  all  dancing  along 
in  the  paths  God  bade  them  follow.  And  how  one 
of  these  whirling  worlds  was  going  to  be  this  world 
that  we  live  in,  and  how  God's  Spirit  brooded  over 
it  as  the  mother  bird  broods  over  her  nest,  until 


The  Morning  Storie*  61 

it  was  made  ready  to  be  a  world  that  animals 
and  people  could  live  in.  And  the  children  go 
through  all  the  six  creation  days,  describing  one 
by  one  the  marvellous  things  that  happened  at  the 
word  of  God,  and  God  saw  that  they  were  all 
good.  And  so  the  heavens  and  the  earth  were 
finished,  and  God  appointed  a  day  of  rest.  This 
is  why  we  have  our  happy  Sundays,  when  we  may 
think  about  God  more  than  we  do  on  any  other 
day,  because  we  are  resting  from  our  everyday 
plays,  just  as  He  rested  when  He  had  finished  mak- 
ing all  the  worlds  and  the  sun  and  the  stars  and 
the  animals  and  people. 

Such  large,  such  infinite  conceptions  are  not  too 
large  for  the  soul  of  the  baby  girl  and  boy,  because 
God  has  put  eternity  in  their  heart.  It  is  almost 
inconceivable  the  wrong  parents  do  their  children 
when  they  try  to  pin  the  story  down  to  scientific 
statement,  and  say  precisely  thus  and  thus,  in  six 
days,  from  Monday  to  Saturday,  was  the  world 
made.  The  children  will  learn  something  of 
science  when  they  go  to  school,  and  will  soon  tell 
their  mother  that  they  know  better  than  that. 
But  in  fact  there  is  no  controversy  between  science 
and  this  chapter,  simply  because  this  chapter  has  no 
more  to  do  with  science  than  any  other  poem  has 

The  spacious  firmament  on  high, 
Witif  all  the  blue  ethereal  sky, 


62  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

And  spangled  heavens,  a  shining  framt, 
Their  great  Original  proclaim. 

In  fact,  there  is  no  firmament,  there  is  no  blue 
sky,  there  are  no  spangled  heavens ;  but  was  Addi- 
son  wrong  ?  Does  not  what  we  see  when  we  look 
upward  —  though  indeed  there  is  no  upward  — 
speak  to  us  of  God  ?  The  purpose  of  this  chapter 
is  not  to  show  the  process  of  creation  but  to  show 
God.  When  the  attention  is  directed  to  the  right 
things  in  this  account,  it  no  more  offends  the  scien- 
tific sense  than  it  offended  the  devout  heart  before 
the  day  of  science. 

No,  rather,  let  the  child  be  prepared,  as  his  mind 
expands,  for  perceiving  that  the  rudimentary  science 
of  his  "  First  Book  "  has  no  controversy  with  his 
religion,  —  that  is,  his  apprehension  of  God  and  of 
God's  relations  with  the  world, — by  being  told 
precisely  what  is  the  case  with  regard  to  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis,  and  how  it  came  to  be  put  as 
the  magnificent  prologue  to  this  Bible  which  we 
truly  call  the  Word  of  God.  The  chapter  is  a 
great  canticle  of  praise,  the  song  of  God  and  the 
universe.  Those  expressions  that  prosaic  people 
have  taken  to  be  scientific  are  pure  poetry.  Doubt- 
less they  are  the  honest  expression  of  the  beliefs  of 
the  people  of  a  time  before  science  was.  In  those 
days  not  the  Hebrews  only,  but  all  thinkers,  be- 
lieved that  there  was  a  firmament,  —  a  solid  arch 


The  Morning  Stories  63 

between  the  earth  and  the  sky,  keeping  "the  waters 
which  were  under  the  firmament  from  the  waters 
which  were  above  the  firmament,"  preventing  the 
upper  floods  from  falling  down  and  inundating  the 
earth.  This  is  what  the  writer  of  the  story  of 
Noah  believed,  and  he  adds  to  our  knowledge  of 
what  ancient  peoples  actually  thought  the  firma- 
ment to  be,  for  he  evidently  pictured  it  as  full  of 
windows,  which  God  opened  when  he  sent  rain. 
There  is  much  of  this  conception  in  the  Old 
Testament.  The  psalmist  refers  to  the  experience 
of  Israel  in  the  wilderness,  when  God  opened  the 
doors  of  heaven  and  rained  down  manna  upon  them. l 
He  also  refers  to  the  waters  that  are  above  the 
heavens,  that  is,  the  firmament,2  and  again  he  says 
that  God  watereth  the  hills  from  his  chambers,  the 
beams  of  which  are  laid  in  the  waters  that  are  above 
the  firmament.3  Job  tells  about  a  watercourse,  or 
sluiceway,  by  which  the  overflowing  of  the  waters 
pour  down  upon  the  earth  in  rain.4  These  are  a 
far  nobler  conception  than  that  of  the  early  Greeks, 
who  thought  that  the  firmament  was  full  of  holes, 
like  a  sieve,  and  that  the  daughters  of  Danseus, 
trying  to  draw  water  in  it,  continually  let  some 
spill  through  upon  the  earth.  The  writer  of  the 
book  of  Job,  on  the  other  hand,  believed  the  firma- 

i  Ps.  Ixxviii.  23,  24.  2  Ps.  cxlviii.  4. 

*  Ps.  civ.  13,  3.  *  Job  xxxviii.  26. 


64  Telling  Bible  Stories 

ment  to  be  strong  glass,  "  as  a  molten  looking 
glass  "  *  stretched  over  the  earth  and  held  up  by 
the  high  mountains,  as  by  pillars.2  The  prophet 
Jeremiah  thought  of  the  firmament  as  something 
stretched  out  by  the  discretion  of  God,3  or,  as  he 
says  in  another  place,  by  His  understanding,4  and 
the  Revised  Version  shows  us  that  Amos  had  the 
same  idea  as  the  author  of  Job.5  None  of  these 
writers  knew  anything  of  science;  the  writer  of 
this  canticle  was  concerned  only  to  make  the  ideas 
that  he  and  all  the  world  held  tell  the  story  of  God. 
And  in  this  splendid  poem  they  do  tell  that  story  : 
they  show  God  as  one,  while  to  other  peoples  He 
seemed  to  be  many;  they  show  Him  as  loving  man, 
where  as  other  peoples  believed  their  gods  to  be 
jealous  of  man  ;  they  show  Him  as  creating  the 
world  to  be  the  congenial  environment  in  which 
man  could  grow  to  be  more  and  more  like  God. 

There  will  be  no  need  to  tell  the  child  that  this 
chapter  is  not  folk-lore  like  the  other  story.  He 
felt  the  difference,  as  he  felt  the  difference  be- 
tween the  stories  of  when  mother  was  a  little 
girl  and  those  in  his  book  of  fairy  tales,  both  of 
which  he  found  equally,  but  differently,  convinc- 
ing. Explain  to  him  as  he  grows  older  —  he  will 
read  it  soon  on  the  first  page  of  his  ancient  his 


*  Job  xxiYii.  18.       2  Job  xxvi.  11.        *  Jer.  x.  12. 

*  Jer.  li.  16.  •  Amos  ix.  6,  R.V. 


The  Morning  Stories  65 

tory  —  that  all  peoples  of  the  world  have  their 
stories  of  how  the  world  was  made,  and  tell  him 
some  of  them,  that  he  may  see  how  essentially 
they  differ  from  this  one,  though  in  many  things 
they  may  agree.  Tell  him  then  the  Assyrian 
story  of  creation,  which  if  you  do  not  already 
know  it,  you  may  find  in  the  Biblical  Encyclo- 
pedia ;  you  will  hardly  need  to  show  him  how 
like  this  it  is  and  yet  how  unlike.  Tell  him  that 
the  Assyrian  story  is  very  old  ;  that  it  was  written 
in  a  great  epic  poem,  like  Homer's  Iliad,  which 
his  brother  or  sister  or  the  boys  in  the  high  school 
are  studying  ;  and  that  educated  people  all  over 
the  world  in  ancient  days  studied  it,  as  they  now 
study  Homer,  and  believed  it  to  be  the  best  pos- 
sible conception  of  the  creation  —  better  than  that 
of  the  Egyptians  or  the  desert  tribes  or  the  black 
people.  And  yet  the  people  of  Israel  were  not 
satisfied  with  it,  because  it  told  of  many  gods, 
and  of  their  bad  actions,  their  quarrels  and  fight- 
ings, and  it  taught  that  the  gods  sprang  out  of 
the  world,  whereas  Israel  believed  that  there  was 
only  one  God,  and  that  He  was  perfectly  good  and 
holy  and  strong,  and  that  He  made  the  world, 
instead  of  Himself  springing  out  of  the  world. 
And  so  some  gifted  Israelite,  no  one  knows  who, 
wrote  this  great  poem,  the  Song  of  God  and  the 
Universe.  He  drew  his  ideas  of  the  order  of 


66  Telling  Bible  Stories 

creation  from  the  great  Assyrian  epic,  which  prob- 
ably Abraham  had  studied  in  school  before  he 
left  Assyria  to  go  to  Canaan.  He  followed  it  in 
this  respect,  for  no  one  knew  any  better  science 
then ;  but  he  left  out  all  those  wrong  ideas  about 
the  gods  and  how  the  world  was  made,  putting 
in  true  ideas  about  the  one  God,  the  Creator  of 
heaven  and  earth,  and  the  Father  of  the  souls  of 
men. 

Nothing  of  all  this  is  beyond  the  comprehension 
or  outside  the  interest  of  the  growing  boy,  initi- 
ated almost  from  his  first  school  days  into  the 
mythology  of  Greece  and  the  Norse  folk  and  the 
rudiments  of  popular  science.  And  this  marvel- 
lous poem  having  been  thus  explained  to  him, 
before  he  has  been  taught  that  science  contradicts 
the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  his  faith  will  no  more 
be  shaken  by  such  teaching  when  it  comes,  nor 
the  chapter  robbed  of  its  thrilling  appeal  to  his 
highest  and  deepest  nature,  than  any  other  poem 
will  be  robbed  of  its  interest,  or  his  "Aladdin" 
and  wonder  tales  be  made  by  his  science  book  good 
for  nothing  but  to  be  thrown  away.  I  am  not 
putting  the  Old  Testament  stories  on  a  par  with 
"  Aladdin  "  and  the  wonder  tales  ;  I  am  only  say- 
ing that  as  regards  physical  science  they  are  in 
the  same  category  of  entire  aloofness,  being 
utterly  unrelated  to  it.  And  therefore,  the  scoff- 


The  Morning  Stories  67 

ing  teacher,  or  the  superficial  book  that  may 
some  day  tell  the  boy  that  his  religion,  or  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  "  stands  or  falls  "  with  his 
ability  to  reconcile  geology  and  Genesis,  will  be 
to  him  as  the  prince  of  this  world  was  to  our 
Lord  when  he  approached  Him,  finding  "  nothing 
in  Him "  to  which  to  make  an  appeal. 

The  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  seen  from  this 
historic  and  literary  point  of  view,  gives  the 
right  key  to  all  the  other  stories  of  these  eleven 
chapters,  the  reason  why  we  find  them  in  the 
Bible.  However  far  back  discovery  may  carry 
the  arts  of  reading  and  writing,  archeology 
teaches  us  that  for  many  generations,  probably 
for  thousands  of  years,  while  people  were  think- 
ing on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  there  were  yet  no 
means  for  recording  the  product  of  their  activity, 
or  at  least  for  disseminating  it  among  the  people, 
except  in  the  memory,  —  by  stories  passed  down 
through  generations  on  the  lips  of  those  who 
heard  them.  We  certainly  know  from  study  of  the 
North  American  Indians  and  other  primitive  folk, 
and  from  the  mythologies  of  all  peoples,  that  all 
this  time  the  minds  of  men  were  tremendously  oc- 
cupied with  the  mysteries  of  life  and  the  mysteries 
of  nature.  What  makes  the  sun  disappear  in  the 
evening  ?  A  dragon  has  swallowed  it.  How  does 
it  come  back  every  morning?  A  god  has  pierced 


68  Telling  Bible  Stories 

the  dragon,  and  set  it  free.  What  makes  the  wind 
blow?  A  god  is  shaking  the  trees.  What  makes 
the  sky  so  beautiful  in  the  morning?  A  goddess 
paints  the  clouds.  Why  do  people  die  and  leave 
us  ?  The  gods  are  jealous  of  our  happiness,  or  the 
people  have  done  some  wrong  that  must  be  pun- 
ished. Why  does  winter  come  after  summer? 
The  dreadful  god  of  the  underworld  has  carried 
away  the  fair  daughter  of  the  goddess  who  makes 
the  corn  grow,  and  she  has  gone  to  seek  her.  And 
so  on  and  on,  through  the  whole  cycle  of  nature 
and  of  human  life. 

These  answers  we  call  mythology,  and  that  there 
is  no  primitive  people,  however  benighted,  without 
its  mythology,  however  rude,  proves  that  there  is 
no  mind  so  densely  ignorant  as  not  to  occupy  itself 
in  some  degree  with  these  dark  mysteries.  We 
may  be  sure  that  the  early  clans  and  tribes  who 
later  formed  the  people  Israel  were  not  different 
from  others  in  this  respect.  They  differed  from 
others,  however,  in  just  this  :  that  for  the  blessing 
of  the  world  they  had  been  inspired  with  a  mar- 
vellous and  unique  God-consciousness,  and  they 
were  therefore  far  more  interested  and  perplexed 
by  the  moral  and  social  problems  of  the  world  than 
by  its  nature  mysteries.  Whence  came  sin  ?  Why 
are  crimes  against  life  and  property  crimes  ?  What 
is  the  true  relation  between  man  and  man  ?  Whence 


The  Morning  Stories  69 

came  the  universal  law  of  blood  revenge?  How 
arose  the  tremendous  inconvenience  of  various 
languages?  How  came  there  to  be  various 
peoples  in  the  world  ?  Why  do  good  men  die  ? 
These  problems  they  attempted  to  solve,  not  by 
nature  myths  but  by  historic  stories,  moulding  and 
remoulding  the  folk  tales  that  they  received  from 
father  and  transmitted  to  son  as  their  ideas  of 
God  and  of  human  relations  became  clearer. 
Doubtless  there  were  scores  of  these  folk  tales, 
problem  stories  as  we  may  properly  call  them ; 
and  whether  the  few  selected  from  among  the 
wealth  of  Israel's  folk-lore  for  the  first  eleven 
chapters  of  Genesis  were  reworked  by  the  writer 
of  the  book  or  incorporated  in  it  as  they  came  to 
him  is  a  matter  of  importance  for  anthropology 
and  psychology,  but  is  of  no  moment  for  the 
children. 


This  question  of  folk-lore  in  the  Old  Testament 
is  of  great  importance  for  the  interpretation  not 
only  of  Genesis  but  of  certain  Psalms  and  of  the 
prophets.  The  perspicacious  reader  will  find  in 
them  much  evidence  that  the  minds  of  even  the 
later  writers  were  saturated  with  this  old  folk- 
lore, just  as  the  minds  of  cultivated  people  of 


70  Telling  Bible  Stories 

to-day  are  saturated  with  the  classics  of  Greece 
and  Rome  and  of  their  own  language ;  and  more 
than  one  disputed  theological  dogma,  more  than 
one  mistaken  view  of  the  past  and  the  future,  is 
due  to  failure  to  discriminate  between  the  literary 
use  of  these  old  ideas  and  direct  religious  teaching. 
Other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  show  that 
the  minds  of  the  Hebrew  writers  were  greatly 
occupied  with  the  mystery  of  creation.  To  them 
it  was  a  subject  of  special  interest,  because  accord- 
ing to  their  view  the  history  of  Israel,  the  chosen 
race,  began  with  the  creation,  God  having  had 
Israel  in  His  mind  when  He  began  to  create  the 
universe.  Again  and  again  they  recur  to  the 
subject,  and  with  no  care  to  make  their  accounts 
square  with  either  the  first  or  the  second  chapter  of 
Genesis.  There  is  a  very  sublime  and  most  poeti- 
cal account  of  creation  in  Proverbs  viii.  22-31, 
in  which  the  heavenly  wisdom  is  represented  as 
being  with  God  during  the  creation  period,  "re- 
joicing always  before  him "  while  the  work  was 
going  on,  and  (as  a  more  accurate  translation 
makes  it)  "sporting  in  the  habitable  part  of  the 
earth,"  those  parts  that  He  had  finished.  This 
account  contains  allusions  to  ancient  myth,  from 
which  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  is  remarkably 
free  :  the  "  circle  upon  the  face  of  the  depth  "  is 
the  rim  or  barrier  which  the  ancients  supposed  to 


The  Morning  Stories  71 

encompass  the  flat  disk  of  the  world  to  keep  the 
ocean  from  spilling  off ;  and  there  is  a  clear  refer- 
ence to  the  pillars  upon  which  many  peoples  be- 
lieved the  earth  to  be  founded.  A  creation  story 
in  Job1  speaks  not  only  of  the  bounds  with 
which  the  waters  are  compassed,  but  also  of  the 
"  crooked  serpent "  ;  that  is,  the  dragon  which 
every  evening  swallowed  the  sun.  In  this  ac- 
count, along  with  these  mythical  ideas,  is  the 
sublime  conception  of  the  earth  hanging  upon 
nothing,  to  which  the  concrete  Hebrew  mind  must 
with  great  difficulty  have  attained.  More  com- 
monly, with  thinkers  of  other  ancient  nations,  the 
Old  Testament  writers  conceive  of  the  earth  as 
resting  upon  something,  or  "founded  upon  the 
seas  and  established  upon  the  floods."2  There  is 
in  the  One  Hundred  and  Fourth  Psalm  a  descrip- 
tion of  creation  of  exquisite  beauty,  which  not  only 
refers  to  "  the  foundations  of  the  earth  that  it  be 
not  removed  forever,"  but  contains  an  extremely 
picturesque  description  of  the  dividing  of  the 
waters,  entirely  different  from  Genesis  i. 

The  same  feeling  of  the  necessity  of  keeping 
the  sea  in  its  place  appears  in  the  book  of  Job,  in 
a  magnificent  poem  of  creation,  represented  as 
uttered  by  God  himself.3  The  passage  is  very 
clearly  poetic  ;  it  is  one  of  the  most  sublime 
i  Jcb  xxvi.  7-14.  2  ps>  xxiv<  2.  »  Job  xxxviii. 


72  Telling  Bible  Stories 

poems  in  all  literature,  and  if  the  mothers  of  past 
generations,  like  the  mother  of  Ruskin,  had  caused 
their  children  to  commit  it  to  memory,  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  would  never  have  been  set  up 
as  the  norm  of  the  creation  idea,  and  the  world 
would  have  been  saved  an  incalculable  amount  of 
controversy. 

These  creation  stories  are  not  for  the  youngest 
children,  as  the  first  two  chapters  of  Genesis  are. 
It  is  as  they  grow  older,  and  have  begun  to  com- 
mit poetry  to  memory,  and  are  studying  myth- 
ology in  school,  that  the  mother  should  direct 
their  attention  to  these  poems  in  Job  and  the 
Psalms.  This  is  the  time  for  the  children  to 
know  them,  not  only  because  of  their  sublime 
language  and  grand  sweep  of  vision,  but  also  be- 
cause through  them  they  will  gradually  perceive 
the  true  purpose  of  the  creation  stories  of  Genesis, 
which  they  have  known  since  before  they  can 
remember.  To  know  God  is  the  beginning  of 
wisdom  as  well  as  eternal  life,  and  all  these  crea- 
tion stories  most  effectively  reveal  God. 

VI 

But  they  have  also  another  value,  immensely 
practical,  for  the  young  people  of  college  years, 
when  they  begin  to  study  philosophy.  To  mosfc 


The  Morning  Stories  73 

young  people  the  first  effect  of  this  study  is 
extremely  disturbing  to  the  mind.  It  is  the  first 
summons  that  calls  them  to  think  abstractly, 
and  outside  of  the  lines  in  which  their  minds  have 
hitherto  worked.  Nothing  can  possibly  be  a 
better  preparation  for  such  a  course  of  study  than 
those  thoughts  of  God  and  of  His  relation  to  the 
universe  which  these  stories  embody,  provided 
that  as  children  they  have  been  encouraged  to 
think  in  freedom  and  to  exercise  their  minds  upon 
the  subject  in  the  various  aspects  presented  by  the 
various  accounts.  For  in  them  all  God  is  shown 
to  be  entirely  independent  of  matter,  and  yet  the 
very  soul  and  living  principle  of  matter.  Neither 
identified  with  matter  nor  confused  with  it  as  if 
material  things  were  an  emanation  from  Him,  in 
all  these  accounts,  however  various,  God  is  shown 
as  bringing  matter  into  being  by  His  creative 
word,  and  controlling  it  by  an  active  exercise  of 
will.  He  speaks  and  it  is  done  ;  he  commands 
and  it  stands  fast.  The  mother  need  not  try  to 
explain  all  this  to  her  grown  children  in  terms  of 
the  schools.  Doubtless  they  will  prove  to  be  more 
at  home  in  such  language  than  she.  But  if  all 
these  stories,  and  their  true  significance,  have 
long  been  a  part  of  the  young  people's  mind-stuff, 
she  will  now  perceive  that  nothing  in  all  their 
education  has  been  as  accurately  calculated  to  give 


74  Telling  Bible  Stories 

them  a  clear  conception  of  unseen  things,  a  sound 
basis  for  that  collegiate  study  of  philosophy,  which 
is  so  often  unsettling  to  the  faith  of  the  student. 
The  ideas  inherent  in  and  common  to  all  these 
creation  accounts,  first  presented  to  the  mind  in 
early  childhood,  and  permitted  to  develop  freely 
in  the  expanding  intellect,  will  prove  their  best 
safeguard  in  those  bitter-sweet  years  when  the 
children  are  passing  out  from  the  shelter  of  their 
mother's  thought,  their  mother's  faith,  and  com- 
pelled to  formulate  their  own  thought  and  to 
attain  to  a  faith  of  their  own. 


CHAPTER   III 

MORE  MORNING  STORIES 

Genesis  iii. 

I 

OF  all  the  problems  which  have  exercised  the 
mind  of  thoughtful  man,  the  problem  of  sin  is  the 
darkest  and  most  perplexing.  It  is  therefore  no 
matter  of  surprise  that  an  attempt  of  the  Hebrew 
people  to  explain  this  pivotal  problem  of  human 
life,  in  the  mythical  way  in  which  all  problems 
were  first  explained,  should  find  an  early  place  in 
Genesis.  The  story  contained  in  the  third  chap- 
ter, commonly  called  "  The  Story  of  Paradise  and 
the  Fall,"  has  indeed  a  far  deeper  meaning  than  has 
usually  been  found  in  it.  A  title  more  profoundly 
expressing  its  purpose  is  "The  Story  of  Man's 
Separation  from  God,"  for  its  essential  motive  is 
to  explain  this  problem  which  underlies  the  other, 
since  when  we  realize  the  presence  of  God  we  do 
not  sin.  It  is  the  answer  to  the  question,  How 
came  it  about  that  we  human  beings,  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  with  a  God-breathed  soul,  dear  to 
Him,  therefore,  as  His  children,  cannot  always  live 

75 


76  Telling  Bible  Stories 

in  constant,  visible  fellowship  with  Him  ?  It  would 
be  so  easy  in  that  case  to  be  good  !  And  surely 
that  must  be  the  normal,  the  natural  life  for 
beings  whose  souls  are  an  inbreathing  of  God ! 

With  the  problem  of  sin,  as  a  problem,  the  little 
child  has  nothing  to  do,  but  at  an  earlier  age  than 
the  mother  deems  possible,  he  has  wondered  why 
he  cannot  see  God  and  hear  Him  speak.  This 
story  of  "  The  Separation  of  Man  from  God  "  tells 
him  why. 

For  intrinsic  reasons  it  is  a  beautiful  story  to 
tell  the  little  child.  It  makes  immense  appeal  not 
only  to  his  constructive  imagination,  but  also  to 
his  faculties  of  awe  and  love,  and  to  his  sense 
of  right  and  wrong.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
thoroughly  symbolic  of  all  the  stories  in  the  Bible, 
and  for  this  reason  also  it  is  a  beautiful  story  to 
tell  the  children.  For  the  same  reason  it  is  of 
tremendous  importance  that  as  we  tell  it  to  them 
as  their  very  first  lesson  in  practical  ethics,  we 
read  into  it  nothing  that  is  not  there  upon  the 
surface.  The  story  is  itself  so  exquisitely  adapted 
to  the  early  mental  processes  of  a  child,  that  to 
force  it  into  the  service  of  any  theological  inter- 
pretation is  the  worst  sort  of  philistinism.  But 
let  the  mother  be  most  sensitive  to  all  that  is  in 
this  brief  but  marvellously  pregnant  story.  For 
example,  it  was  not  the  voice  of  God,  calling  His 


More  Morning  Stories  77 

naughty  children,  that  made  them  shrink  away  to 
hide  among  the  trees,  and  try  somehow  to  cover 
themselves  with  aprons  of  leaves.  It  was  simply 
the  sound  of  His  footsteps,  walking  in  His  garden 
as  He  was  wont  to  do,  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  that 
terrified  the  disobedient  pair.  To  prepare  herself 
for  telling  any  Bible  story,  the  mother  needs  to 
read  carefully  the  simple  words. 

In  the  nature  of  things  the  tree  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  good  and  evil,  the  tree  of  life,  the  serpent, 
are  symbolical,  if  we  say  not,  mythical.  But  this 
concerns  the  little  child  only  as  he  instinctively 
feels  in  the  symbol  the  thing  symbolized,  and  pre- 
cisely for  this  reason.  The  story  is  all  idyllic 
freshness  and  beauty  until  the  tragedy  comes,  and 
still  it  is  idyllic,  as  God  comes  to  walk  in  the 
garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  and  for  the  first 
time  His  footsteps  startle  His  children  into  terror 
instead  of  awakening  joy  and  glad  response,  as  till 
then  had  always  been  the  case.  Evidently  we  are 
expected  to  picture  to  ourselves  that  until  this  sad 
evening  Adam  and  Eve  had  always  run  joyfully 
to  meet  God  when  they  heard  Him  walking  in  His 
garden,  just  as  children  run  to  meet  their  father 
coming  home  to  them  in  the  cool  of  the  day.  And 
there  is  no  little  child  that  does  not  feel  that  he 
would  run  quick  to  meet  God,  if  he  heard  Him 
coming. 


78  Telling  Bible  Stories 

This  is  not  reading  into  the  story  something 
that  is  not  there  ;  it  is  simply  filling  in  the  outline 
in  a  natural  and  inevitable  way.  The  Levitical 
legislator  —  a  writer  of  far  more  imagination  than 
a  superficial  reading  of  Leviticus  is  likely  to  re- 
veal —  saw  the  truth  in  the  idea,  and  with  evident 
reference  to  the  paradise  story  promises  that  God 
will  walk  still  among  His  people,  on  condition  of 
their  obedience.1  This  is  the  ideal  to  give  to 
the  child  as  he  comes  to  the  thoughtful  age. 

There  is  something  to  be  made,  even  to  the  little 
child,  of  the  character  of  the  temptation.  Eve  saw 
that  the  fruit  was  pleasant  to  the  eyes,  and  even 
the  baby  is  attracted  by  bright  color;  she  saw  that 
it  was  good  for  food,  and  the  first  impulse  of  every 
child  is  to  eat,  —  to  put  things  into  its  mouth. 
Later,  the  fact  that  these  two  desires,  both  useful 
and  right  in  themselves,  the  love  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  desire  for  the  useful,  are  the  basal  elements 
of  temptation  may  well  be  developed,  in  connec- 
tion with  those  other  teachings  about  temptation 
which  will  presently  be  brought  forward. 

It  is  a  disastrous  thing  indeed  when  the  mother 
loses  the  typical  force  of  the  story  by  teaching  her 
child  that  the  serpent  is  Satan  or  that  labor  is  a 
curse,  or  indeed  that  God  laid  any  curse  upon 
Adam  and  Eve.  The  story  distinctly  says  none 
iLev.  xxvj.  12. 


More  Morning  Stories  79 

of  these  things.  There  is  nothing,  indeed,  in  all 
the  canonical  Old  Testament  to  show  that  the 
Hebrew  people  ever  understood  the  serpent  in 
this  story  to  be  Satan.  In  the  Apocryphal  book 
of  Wisdom,  written  after  the  exile  had  brought 
Israel  into  contact  with  the  Eastern  peoples,  the 
serpent  is  indeed  called  the  devil,  though  the  devil 
is  not  identified  with  this  story.  The  Babylo- 
nians and  Assyrians  had  this  myth,  and  the  very 
philosophical  Persians,  searching  for  the  origin  of 
evil,  could  only  account  for  it  by  the  belief  that 
two  opposing  principles  ruled  the  world,  the  prin- 
ciple of  good  and  the  principle  of  evil.  They 
personified  these  principles  as  Ormuzd  and  Ahri- 
man,  and  through  the  influence  of  these  ideas  the 
later  Jews  came  to  personify  evil  as  Satan,  as  is 
particularly  seen  in  the  Apocryphal  books.  A 
casual  reading  of  some  parts  of  the  New  Testament 
seems  to  show  that  their  writers  identified  Satan 
with  the  serpent  in  paradise,  and  assuredly  many 
of  the  Church  Fathers  did  so.  But  with  the 
knowledge  of  other  literatures  and  other  religions, 
which  all  intelligent  persons  of  to-day  have,  and 
which  the  Church  Fathers  were  not  to  blame  for 
not  having,  it  is  impossible  for  any  thoughtful 
reader  of  the  New  Testament  not  to  see  that  such 
New  Testament  expressions  as  identify  Satan 
with  the  serpent  in  paradise  are  purely  literary, 


80  Telling  Bible  Stories 

not  in  the  slightest  degree  theological,  and  de- 
signed not  to  teach  a  dogma  but  to  illustrate  a 
truth. 

Therefore,  the  mother  will  be  quite  beside  her 
purpose  if  she  reads  such  things  as  these  into  this 
story.  The  time  for  explaining  why  the  serpent 
is  here  comes  later,  when  the  child  has  studied 
the  mythologies  and  read  some  of  the  folk  tales  of 
other  nations.  Then,  too,  may  come  the  impres- 
sive unfolding  of  the  meaning  of  the  command 
not  to  eat  of  the  forbidden  tree,  and  the  precise 
character  both  of  the  disobedience  and  the  penalty 
that  it  incurred,  as  I  shall  try  to  show.  But  long 
before  the  time  for  developing  the  story  to  this 
extent,  indeed,  at  the  very  earliest  time  of  telling 
the  story,  the  mother  can  put  it  upon  the  plane 
where  her  little  child  stands,  if  she  thinks  of  it 
in  her  own  mind,  not  so  much  as  an  answer  to 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  evil,  as  of  that  sim- 
pler, yet  all  inclusive  question,  "  Why  cannot  we 
see  God  now,  and  hear  Him  speak  ?  " 

From  this  viewpoint  she  can  make  far  more  of 
the  story,  both  for  filling  the  child's  soul  with 
great  thoughts  and  as  a  means  of  elementary 
ethical  teaching,  than  if  she  had  the  problem  of 
sin  in  her  mind.  For  with  sin,  as  sin,  no  imma- 
ture mind  has  by  any  possibility  to  do.  Good- 
ness and  naughtiness  the  little  child  knows,  and 


More  Morning  Stories  81 

the  happiness  of  its  mother's  approving  smile  and 
the  pain  of  her  reproving  frown  ;  and  the  well- 
taught  child  soon  comes  to  feel  precisely  thus 
with  regard  to  God  ;  but  there  is  as  yet  no  ques- 
tion in  his  little  heart  as  to  sin,  nor,  indeed,  can 
be.  Yet  even  thus  early  his  little  soul  feels 
instinctively  that  being  the  child  of  God  he  ought 
by  right  to  be  the  companion  of  God,  and  this 
story  shows  him  why  it  is  that  God  does  not  live 
with  him  as  his  father  and  mother  do.  Though 
not  a  word  as  to  the  moral  necessity  of  punish- 
ment for  wrong-doing  has  ever  been  said  to  him, 
his  moral  sense  perfectly  approves  of  the  sentence 
that  Adam  and  Eve,  having  disobeyed  God,  could 
not  go  on  living  in  His  garden,  although  the 
symbolism  by  which  this  ethical  fact  is  justified 
cannot  be  explained  to  him  till  later.  But  he 
must  be  told,  right  here,  that  Adam  and  Eve 
were  sent  out  of  the  garden,  not  because  God  was 
angry  with  them,  but  because  He  wanted  them  to 
learn,  by  hard  work  and  trouble,  how  to  be  good. 
And  thus  setting  goodness  before  the  child  as  the 
one  thing  that  God  cares  about,  —  is  it  not  also 
the  one  thing  that  mother  cares  about  for  her 
children  ?  —  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  make  him 
see  that  hard  work  and  sickness  and  troubles  are 
just  helps  to  be  good.  It  will  even  be  possible,  in 
case  the  child  has  already  come  to  the  knowledge 


82  Telling  Bible  Stories 

of  death,  —  and  in  this  case  it  will  be  most  desir- 
able, —  to  make  him  see  that  even  dying  is  noth- 
ing to  be  unhappy  about.  It  simply  means  that 
the  hard  lesson  has  been  learned,  and  the  Father 
has  sent  for  His  child  to  come  home  from  school 
to  live  happy  with  Him  forever.  But  this  part  it 
is  not  necessary  to  develop  until  the  time  comes. 
The  word  death  does  not  appear  in  the  Biblical 
story,  nor  need  it  in  the  mother's  account.  Though 
as  the  child  learns  that  birds  and  animals  die,  it 
may  be  well  to  teach  him  something  of  the  benefi- 
cent law  of  dust  to  dust,  before  the  time  comes 
to  teach  him  that  the  spirit  returns  to  God  who 
gave  it. 

That  the  third  chapter  of  Genesis  is  not  what 
children  call  "  a  true  story "  it  will  never  be 
necessary  to  explain,  any  more  than  we  explain 
that  "The  Steadfast  Tin  Soldier,"  or  "The  Ice 
Maiden,"  is  not  true.  The  child  understands  that 
perfectly  from  the  beginning.  But  before  very 
long,  as  soon,  indeed,  as  he  is  thoroughly  familiar 
with  all  its  incidents,  it  will  be  possible  to  teach 
him  that  the  story  has  a  meaning,  that  the  trees 
and  the  serpent  and  the  curse  stand  for  some- 
thing, and  this  will  be  a  very  valuable  addition  to 
the  categories  of  his  thought.  A  new  set  of  his 
faculties  will  come  into  delightful  exercise  when 
he  first  learns  that  the  story  has  been  told  him 


More  Morning  Stories  83 

precisely  because  it  has  a  meaning.  Something 
of  this  meaning  he  has  already  felt :  the  misery 
of  disobedience,  the  wrong  of  listening  to  any  one 
who  asks  him  to  disobey,  the  woe  of  being  made 
afraid  of  God  by  having  disobeyed,  the  impossi- 
bility that  naughty  people  should  live  in  God's 
garden  where  He  loves  to  walk,  the  promise  that 
a  naughty  child  may  conquer  his  naughtiness  if 
he  tries,  in  Jesus'  help.  Now  that  he  has  come 
to  school  years  the  symbolism  of  this  story  should 
be  related  to  what  he  is  learning  there.  This 
may  easily  be  done  if  in  his  early  years  the  story 
has  been  told  to  him  simply,  just  as  we  find  it  in 
the  Bible.  He  will  soon  find  things  in  his  mythol- 
ogy book  and  in  his  book  of  fables  that  will  make 
it  easy  for  him  to  understand  that  the  serpent  in 
this  story  was  a  mythical  animal,  and  that  it  so 
appears  in  many  primitive  legends.  At  the  age 
when  his  teacher  sends  him  to  the  library  to  look 
up  things  it  will  be  well  to  put  this  method  in 
practice  in  connection  with  his  Bible  stories,  by 
setting  him  to  find  in  other  parts  of  the  Bible 
places  where  the  serpent  is  spoken  of  in  pre- 
cisely the  mythical  or  symbolic  way  in  which  it 
appears  in  this  story.1  Later,  when  he  begins  his 

1  For  instance,  Isa.  xxvii.  1 ;  Ps.  Ixxiv.  13,  14  ;  Isa.  li.  9 ; 
Ezek.  xxix.  3,  xxxii.  2.  It  may  be  well  to  explain  that  the 
word  Kahab  is  equivalent  to  Egypt,  and  dragon  and  leviathan 


84  Telling  Bible  Stories 

classical  studies,  he  will  see  in  the  serpent  the 
truly  spiritual  and  ethical  treatment  of  the  com- 
mon belief  of  ancient  peoples  that  the  gods  were 
jealous  of  the  happiness  of  men,  and  continually 
intervened  to  make  them  trouble.  How  dif- 
ferent from  the  old  Hebrew  writer's  conception 
of  God  ! 

Sacred  trees  and  mythical  trees  also  appear  in 
mythology,  and  this  is  the  proper  time  to  point 
out  the  likeness  and  the  differences  between  the 
tree  of  life  and  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good 
and  evil  and  such  mythical  trees  as  that  which 
bore  the  golden  apples  in  the  garden  of  the  Hes- 
perides.  Here,  again,  will  come  the  opportunity 
to  show  without  argument  or  discussion  the  true 
character  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  As  the 
child  grows  older,  and  his  reading  grows  wider, 
he  can  be  taught  that  though  stories  of  mythical 
trees  abound,  —  in  Persian,  Indian,  Scandinavian, 
as  well  as  in  Greek  folk-lore,  —  not  one  of  them  is 

to  serpent.  Egypt  itself  is  sometimes  personified  as  a  dragon, 
see  the  Ezekiel  references.  The  reference  is  to  the  great  ser- 
pent that  nightly  swallows  the  sun.  All  these  expressions  refer 
to  the  sun  myth,  and  never  to  the  devil.  The  Ezekiel  refer- 
ences and  the  second  in  Isaiah  are  especially  telling,  since  they 
implicate  Egypt,  in  whose  religion  Osiris,  the  setting  sun,  was 
nightly  swallowed  by  the  serpent,  which  in  turn  was  pierced 
by  the  lance-like  rays  of  Horus,  the  rising  sun,  thus  setting  him- 
self free. 


More  Morning  Stories  85 

made  the  vehicle  of  any  teaching  as  to  right  and 
wrong.  There  is  a  Persian  seal  in  the  British 
Museum  which  remarkably  suggests  this  para- 
dise story ;  for  it  bears  the  impress  of  a  tree  with 
a  serpent  coiled  about  it  and  a  man  and  a  woman 
on  either  side0  Until  very  recently  it  was  be- 
lieved that  this  seal  indicated  that  the  ancient 
Persians  had  tried  by  a  similar  story  to  explain 
the  problem  of  sin;  but  now  that  scholars  are 
better  acquainted  with  the  literatures  of  early 
Eastern  peoples,  they  find  that  this  is  not  the 
meaning  of  the  seal.  So  far  as  we  know,  only 
ancient  Israel  attempted  at  so  early  a  time  to 
explain  the  dark  mystery.  Here  is  the  time  and 
place  to  fortify  the  mind  of  the  school  child 
against  the  pernicious  idea,  too  frequently  grafted 
into  this  story,  that  God  disapproved  of  knowl- 
edge in  itself  or  desired  to  keep  it  from  man. 
The  serpent  suggested  this,  but  the  serpent  lied. 
God  had  no  objection  to  their  knowing,  only  to 
their  disobeying.  The  words  "knowledge  of 
good  and  evil"  are  a  comprehensive  figure  for 
"all  knowledge."  And  since,  as  the  proverbial 
writer  says,  "  The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  begin- 
ning," the  very  foundation,  "  of  wisdom,"  so  this 
story  is  meant  to  teach  that  true  knowledge  is 
possible  only  to  the  obedient.  The  mere  prohibi- 
tion to  eat  of  this  tree,  by  giving  to  Adam  and 


86  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Eve  their  first  opportunity  to  obey,  laid  for  them 
the  foundation  of  all  knowledge. 

We  have  seen  that  the  little  child  has  no  con- 
cern with  sin  as  a  problem,  though  he  is  con- 
cerned with  it  as  a  fact.  And  just  as  this  story 
is  the  best  possible  way  of  opening  to  him  the 
sorrowful  truth  that  disobedience  is  what  sepa- 
rates him  from  God,  so  as  he  grows  older  it 
should  be  made  the  means  of  opening  to  him  the 
wonderful  mystery  of  evil  overcome  by  good, 
moral  character  developing  out  of  struggle  with 
temptation,  ultimate  salvation  wrought  by  the 
perfect  obedience  of  One  who,  bruising  the  ser- 
pent's head,  destroys  the  power  of  temptation. 


II 


In  every  human  life  there  is  a  period  of  inno- 
cence, typified  by  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  garden. 
This  innocence  has  no  moral  character  until  the 
opportunity  to  obey  (and  consequently  to  dis- 
obey) is  given,  and  it  is  for  the  great  good  of 
humanity  that  the  innocent  human  being  is  led 
by  struggle  to  attain  moral  character.  In  the 
youngest  child,  though  the  period  of  innocence 
is  not  yet  past,  nor  will  be  for  long,  the  struggle 
has  already  begun.  To  the  growing  boy,  face  to 
face  with  temptations  only  half  understood,  but 


More  Morning  Stories  87 

bewildering  and  often  agonizing,  the  happy  con- 
viction of  his  earlier  years,  that  it  would  be  easy 
to  be  good  if  one  lived  in  God's  garden,  turns  to 
the  cruel  inquiry,  "  Why  has  God  not  made  me 
to  be  good  ?  Why  has  He  made  me  susceptible  to 
temptation?"  The  mother  whose  heart  is  torn 
with  the  struggles  and  the  soul-agonizing  ques- 
tions of  her  child  may  turn  to  the  simple  story 
which  for  years  he  has  known  by  heart,  to  explain 
to  him  that  it  would  not  be  easy  for  man  or 
woman,  whom  God  has  created  free,  to  be  good, 
even  in  the  garden  of  God.  Even  a  boy  will 
recognize  that  the  playmate  for  whom  all  things 
are  made  easy  is  but  a  weakling,  that  the  boy 
from  whom  all  temptation  has  been  removed  by 
the  fond  foolishness  of  indulgent  parents  is  no 
true  boy  at  all.  Even  a  boy  will  prefer  to  be  left 
free  to  choose  for  himself,  at  the  risk  of  disastrous 
mistake.  And  this  story  will  show  him  that  the 
Almighty  Father's  method  with  His  children  is 
precisely  the  method  of  wise  and  loving  earthly 
parents.  Even  when  he  was  a  baby  they  did  not 
remove  from  the  nursery  everything  which  might 
possibly  hurt  him  ;  instead,  they  taught  him  not 
to  touch.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  they  put  a  fender 
before  the  fire  which  might  fatally  burn  him  and 
guards  before  the  window  from  which  he  might 
fall.  Now  in  his  boyhood  they  are  giving  hin? 


88  Telling  Bible  Stories 

greater  freedom  of  choice,  but  still  they  watch 
over  him  that  he  make  no  fatal  error.  So  God, 
in  His  garden,  not  only  laid  upon  His  children  a 
command  of  irksome  obedience,  He  also  permitted 
a  tempter  to  come  in  and  suggest  that  the  com- 
mand was  unfair  and  that  disobedience  was  only 
what  was  due  to  themselves.  But  even  then  God 
did  not  let  them  go  on  to  fatal  sin.  Rather,  He 
put  them,  as  the  wise  father  often  puts  his  child, 
where  hard  conditions  would  develop  moral 
strength,  and  bring  out  all  that  was  best  and 
noblest  in  them. 

At  this  age,  and  not  before,  let  the  boy  be  taught 
the  precise  nature  of  the  sentence  pronounced  by 
God  upon  Adam  and  Eve.  No  curse  was  laid  upon 
them  —  emphasize  this  fact.  Punishment  they  did 
incur,  as  every  disobedient  child  must,  but  we  do 
not  want  our  children  to  look  upon  punishment 
as  anything  but  a  blessing.  The  serpent  indeed, 
the  tempter,  was  cursed,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
lay  too  much  stress  upon  the  wickedness  of  tempt- 
ing another  to  do  wrong.  Yet — though  this 
teaching  perhaps  may  better  come  even  later  — 
the  serpent  was  not  treated  as  a  moral  being;  it 
was  simply  for  the  sake  of  Adam  and  Eve  that  it. 
equally  with  the  earth,  was  cursed.  The  subtlety 
of  the  serpent  (more  properly,  the  wisdom,  as  in 
the  Revised  Version)  made  it  a  dangerous  com- 


More  Morning  Stories  89 

panion  for  Adam  and  Eve,  since  it  might  find 
some  new  way  to  tempt  them  to  do  wrong;  and 
therefore  "  enmity  "  was  put  between  them,  as  the 
most  effectual  safeguard.  The  earth  was  cursed 
(only  in  a  figure,  for  this  expression  is  symbolical, 
like  all  the  rest),  simply  as  a  means  of  helping 
Adam  and  Eve  to  be  good.  And  the  work  by 
which  they  were  thenceforth  to  earn  their  living 
was  no  more  a  curse  to  Adam  and  Eve  than  it  is 
now  to  the  schoolboy  who  is  eagerly  looking  for- 
ward to  the  time  when  he  may  begin  to  do  a  man's 
work  in  the  world.  Here  is  the  time  for  the 
mother  to  explain  to  her  boy  that  if  work  is  not 
a  curse,  neither  are  those  strong  impulses  to  idle- 
ness, to  disobedience,  to  impurity,  against  which 
he  is  called  to  struggle,  and  sometimes  with  such 
humiliating  defeat.  They  are  the  tree  in  the 
midst  of  his  garden,  the  opportunity  for  him  to 
grow  in  moral  strength. 

The  children  know  enough  of  history  now  to 
understand  when  they  are  told  that  the  sentence 
pronounced  upon  Eve,  of  subjection  to  her  hus- 
band, was  the  tenderest  mercy  through  the  long 
generations  of  barbarity  and  semi-civilization, 
when  the  protection  of  a  strong  man  was  essential 
to  woman's  happiness  and  to  her  honor,  if  not  to 
her  very  life.  And  the  mother  may  easily  ex- 
plain to  her  growing  boy,  as  to  her  growing  girl, 


90  Telling  Bible  Stories 

the  peculiar  sacredness  of  the  tie  between  her  and 
them,  in  the  sorrow  with  which  she  brought  them 
into  the  world.  Arid  now  is  the  time  to  show 
them  that  the  fact  that  it  was  to  Eve,  the  proto- 
type of  motherhood,  and  not  to  Adam,  that  the 
promise  was  given  of  eventual  triumph  over  evil 
through  the  Son  that  should  one  day  be  born, 
raises  the  sorrowful  sentence,  as  it  raises  the 
entire  story  and  the  dark  problem  which  it 
symbolizes,  into  the  brightest  region  of  hope 
and  into  the  sunlight  of  a  blessed  anticipation  of 
ultimate  perfection. 

It  will  do  no  harm  to  inform  children  of  this 
age  that  this  blessed  hope  was  not  forbidden  even 
to  peoples  to  whom  God  did  not  reveal  Himself  as 
He  did  to  IsraeL  They  will  find  in  text-books 
and  encyclopaedias  that  in  many  nations  there  is 
a  more  or  less  well-developed  mythical  expression 
of  the  hope  of  a  redeemer.  It  found  perhaps  its 
best  expression,  outside  of  the  Old  Testament, 
among  the  Assyrian  people,  who  inscribed  on 
their  tablets  a  promise  that  Merodach  (the  god 
Marduk)  should  be  their  redeemer0  The  Baby- 
lonians had  a  similar  myth,  but  both  were  inex- 
tricably interwoven  with  much  that  is  degrading 
in  polytheistic  mythology.  To  point  out  to  the 
schoolboy  and  girl  the  contrast  between  these 
accounts  and  the  simple  dignity  and  pure  mono 


More  Morning  Stories  91 

theism  of  this  Bible  story  is  to  give  them  a  new 
perception  of  Biblical  inspiration.  The  time  for 
teaching  the  symbolism  of  the  exclusion  of  Adam 
and  Eve  from  the  garden  on  account  of  the  pres- 
ence there  of  the  tree  of  life,  and  the  significance 
of  death  as  the  consequence  and  penalty  of  sin, 
comes  not  with  the  study  of  mythology,  but  at 
this  later  time  with  the  first  study  of  elementary 
ethics.  And  then  the  mother  will  point  out  the 
beneficence  of  death  to  one  who  loves  God,  by 
shortening  the  time  of  sorrow  and  pain,  limiting 
them  strictly  to  "  the  days  of  life."  By  sending 
Adam  and  Eve  out  of  paradise,  away  from  the 
possibility  that  they  should  "  eat  of  the  tree  of 
life  and  live  forever,"  God  saved  them  from  the 
woe  of  living  forever  subject  to  sin,  and  gave 
them  death  as  the  glad  release. 

That  it  is  not  an  instinct  of  humanity  to  regard 
death  as  evil,  and  therefore  that  it  is  possible  to 
train  our  children  to  look  upon  it  as  a  blessing  to 
good  people,  a  little  reflection  will  show.  Not 
only  are  primitive  peoples  —  the  North  American 
Indians,  for  example  —  without  fear  of  death,  but 
such  cultivated  peoples  as  the  Hindus  and  the 
Japanese  are  singularly  devoid  of  such  fear.  The 
Norsemen  called  death  "  heimgang"  home  going, 
the  joyful  return  of  the  seafarer  from  his  voyage. 
We  may  even  see  in  this  attitude  toward  death 


92  Telling  Bible  Stories 

something  that  seems  to  whisper  that  "  dust  thou 
art  and  to  dust  thou  shalt  return  "  was  not  said  to 
Adam  and  Eve  as  a  threat,  but  by  way  of  comfort, 
being  simply  a  natural  fact.  No,  it  is  profoundly 
and  far  reachirigly  true  that  the  sting  of  death  is 
sin,  as  St.  Paul  taught ;  and  only  those  who  by 
the  Gospel  of  Christ  and  the  teachings  of  the  Old 
Testament  have  come  to  some  adequate  conception 
of  man's  relation  to  God,  and  therefore  of  the 
awfulness  of  sin,  realize  this  sting. 

Ill 

As  with  the  creation  stories,  so  with  this  story 
of  paradise  and  the  separation  from  God,  there  is 
much  that  will  prove  both  a  light  and  an  anchor 
to  young  people  in  their  first  serious  study  of  phi- 
losophy and  ethics.  To  them  the  question  of 
temptation  is  almost  as  baffling  as  the  question  of 
sin.  It  comes  home  to  them,  indeed,  long  before 
this  time,  though  not  formulated  until  now.  Very 
early  in  the  child's  life  the  mother  may  enforce 
by  this  story  the  teaching  which  she  finds  it  so 
often  necessary  to  repeat,  that  the  fact  of  having 
been  tempted  is  no  valid  excuse  for  having  done 
wrong.  "  I  did  it  because  sister  "  or  brother  or 
playmate  "  asked  me  to  "  is  one  of  the  most  fre- 
quent of  nursery  excuses.  It  would  be  hard  to 


More  Morning  Stories  93 

say  at  what  age  it  would  be  too  early  to  teach  the 
little  one  that  a  child  created  in  the  image  of  God 
is  not  compelled  to  do  wrong  simply  because  it  is 
tempted.  The  Child  Jesus,  who  is  the  Model  for 
every  little  child,  did  no  wrong,  though  He  was 
tempted  just  as  often  as  any  other  child.  He  did 
not  yield,  because  even  while  He  was  a  little  child 
He  realized  that  the  child  of  God  ought  not  to  do 
wrong.  This,  I  submit,  is  quite  as  legitimate  a 
lesson  to  draw  from  the  third  chapter  of  Genesis 
as  the  doctrine  of  original  sin,  and  far  more  per- 
tinent to  the  need,  not  of  the  child  only,  but  of 
all  humanity.  With  the  theological  tenet  drawn 
from  this  story  by  St.  Paul  I  have  no  quarrel. 
Experience  teaches  that  it  is  the  scientific  ex- 
pression of  a  very  profound  truth.  But  for  the 
practical  duty  of  bringing  up  a  child  to  be 
good,  it  is  simply  of  no  value.  The  mother's 
task  in  the  moral  training  of  her  children  is 
not  scientific,  but  practical ;  not  theological,  but 
religious.  What  she  must  look  for  in  the  Bible 
stories  is  their  vital  truths,  which  impress  them- 
selves upon  the  character  years  before  any  theo- 
logical dogma,  however  well  formulated,  can  meet 
it  at  any  point.  It  is  the  vital  truths  which  in- 
form dogmas,  and  not  accuracy  of  theological 
definition,  that  give  whatever  value  they  have  to 
the  catechisms  children  study  in  childhood.  And 


94  Telling  Bible  Stories 

these  vital  truths  lie  upon  the  surface  of  the  Bible 
stories. 

Half  the  battle  is  fought  for  the  growing  boy 
and  girl  in  their  first  study  of  ethics,  their  first 
recognition  of  the  problem  of  temptation  as  a  per- 
sonal problem,  if  they  have  learned  from  the  Bible 
stories  they  heard  at  their  mother's  knee  that 
temptation  is  not  something  inherent  in  human 
nature,  but  is  something  from  without,  which,  and 
which  alone,  is  the  symbolism  of  the  serpent. 
Human  nature  is  the  nature  that  God  gave  to 
man  when  He  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath 
of  life  ;  this  fact  explains,  and  is  intended  to  ex- 
plain, the  reason  why  man  is  so  inexpressibly  dear 
to  God,  so  dear  that  God  is  ready  to  incur  suffer- 
ing, sending  His  Son  to  die,  to  save  him  from  sin. 
The  fact  is  repeated  more  than  once  in  the  course 
of  these  early  stories.1  From  this  point  of  view, 
the  inexpressible  dearness  of  man  to  God,  it  is 
even  not  robbery  for  him  to  be  equal  with  God. 
And  this  makes  it  possible  for  our  boys  and  girls 
to  accept  the  Man  Jesus  as  the  model  of  their 
mature  lives,  as  they  accepted  the  Child  Jesus  as 
the  model  of  their  childhood.  If  Jesus  were  not 
"very  man"  it  would  be  vain  to  try  to  imitate 
Him.  If  He  were  not  the  ideal  man,  the  man 
whom  the  Creator  had  in  mind  when  He  said,  "  Let 
1  Gen.  v.  1,  ix.  6. 


More  Morning  Stories  95 

us  make  man  in  our  own  image,"  it  would  be  de- 
rogatory to  any  boy's  manhood  to  ask  that  he 
should  take  Him  for  his  model.  But  being  what 
He  was,  it  becomes  the  very  mainspring  of  struggle 
against  temptation,  to  know  that  it  was  because 
from  His  earliest  childhood  Jesus  had  been  kept 
from  sin  by  the  realized  presence  of  God,  that 
therefore  in  the  fulness  of  His  young  manhood  He 
could  successfully  resist  the  tempter.  He  had 
had  no  experience  in  sinning,  and  there  was  no 
weak  point  in  His  moral  sense.  Thus  the  promise 
of  God  was  kept,  and  the  seed  of  the  woman  which 
through  all  the  generations  had  been  bruising  the 
serpent's  head  bruised  it  at  last  fatally.  Appre- 
hending this,  perceiving  to  what  imitation  of  his 
Model  he  has  been  called,  the  youth  who  yields  to 
temptation  will  repent  of  it  with  that  sharp  but 
salutary  pain,  which  has  well  been  called  "the 
pain  of  not  being  holy."1 

In  this  teaching  there  is  no  intention  of  deny- 
ing or  even  of  ignoring  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  truth  of  this  theological  dogma, 
which  is  one  purely  metaphysical,  can  hardly  be 
controverted  by  any  one  who  thinks  profoundly. 
But  children  do  riot  think  profoundly,  nor  have 
their  minds  any  metaphysical  questions  needing 
to  be  satisfied.  Their  needs  are  purely  practical, 
1  The  late  Dean  Auguste  Sabatier. 


96  Telling  Bible  Stories 

and  theological  truth  is  of  value  to  them  simply 
for  the  large  thought  it  awakens  in  them,  the 
illimitable  horizon  it  unfolds  before  them.  It 
should  not  be  left  out  of  their  training,  and  it  is 
not  left  out  of  the  training  of  children  to  whom 
the  Bible  stories  are  told.  But  the  time  for  ex- 
plaining this  truth,  even  for  dwelling  upon  it, 
except  as  a  self-evident  fact,  comes  later. 

Again,  it  is  possible  to  teach  even  the  very  little 
child  that  it  does  not  suffer  alone  when  it  does 
wrong,  that  parents  and  playmates  must  suffer 
too.  Later  comes  the  time  for  impressing  upon 
his  mind  that  even  animals  and  nature  share  in 
the  suffering  entailed  by  the  sin  of  man.  This  is 
implied  not  only  in  the  cursed  serpent  and  the 
cursed  ground,  but  also  in  the  death  of  the  beasts 
which  furnished  the  skins  for  clothing.  Suffer- 
ing, death,  even  of  animals,  typify  the  sorrow  of 
God  for  the  sin  of  man,  and  this  is  what  St.  Paul 
meant  when  he  pictured  all  creation,  which  now 
is  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain,  as  sure  to  be 
redeemed  from  pain  when  all  mankind  have  been 
redeemed  from  sin.1 

One  more  thought  in  the  story  remains  to  be 

developed  to  the  growing  children.     While  they 

are  little  no  more  explanation  is  needed  of   the 

newly  awakened  sense  of   shame  and   the  search 

1  Rom.  viii.  22,  23. 


More  Morning  Stories  97 

for  clothing  than  of  any  other  part  of  the  story. 
Presentation  is  the  mother's  only  task,  here  as 
elsewhere,  in  telling  Bible  stories  to  the  little 
ones ;  explanation  comes  later.  She  should  wait 
until  self-consciousness  has  awakened,  until  the 
child  is  at  least  ten  or  eleven  years  old,  before 
undertaking  to  point  out  that  only  the  child  who 
has  done  wrong  thinks  about  himself.  The  good 
child  thinks  of  father  and  mother,  of  plays  and 
pets,  and  of  other  children,  of  things  wonderful 
and  things  delightful,  but  he  does  not  think  about 
himself.  And  when  he  has  done  wrong,  and  feels 
ashamed  and  wants  to  hide  and  cover  himself  up, 
how  little  he  can  do  it !  The  voice  of  conscience 
will  reach  him  amid  the  thickest  trees.  The  fig 
leaves  that  Adam  and  Eve  hastily  fastened  to- 
gether were  no  useful  covering.  It  needed  that 
God  should  come  to  their  help  and  give  them 
coats  of  skins. 

This  is  enough  for  the  time,  but  later,  when 
moral  questions  assail  the  growing  children,  it  can 
be  shown  them  by  this  story  that  sin  is  never 
an  act  that  concerns  the  sinner  alone.  Adam 
thought  that  he  could  cover  himself  with  leaves 
from  a  tree  that  had  no  feeling.  God  showed 
him  that  something  must  suffer  before  his  sense 
of  shame  could  be  relieved.  The  animals  had  to 
die.  that  their  skins  might  be  used  for  dress. 


98  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Yet  is  dress  not  an  evil,  any  more  than  the 
moral  results  of  struggle  with  sin  are  an  evil. 
These  coats  of  skins  were  the  beginning  of  civili- 
zation, the  first  manifest  good  arising  from  the 
moral  struggle  of  man. 

IV 

Some  quiet  Sunday  evening  when  the  children 
are  grown  up,  the  mother  may  gather  together,  in 
free  and  interesting  conversation,  all  the  lessons 
which,  through  the  course  of  years,  she  has 
brought  home  to  their  personal  experience,  by 
this  graded  system  of  telling  the  first  three  sto- 
ries of  Genesis.  "  That  there  is  one  God,  that  He 
is  a  righteous  God,  that  He  demands  righteous- 
ness of  His  children,  and  that  if  they  desire  right- 
eousness He  will  forgive  their  sins  and  help  them 
to  become  worthy  to  be  called  His  children  ;  " 1 
that  the  ideal  state  of  man  is  to  live  in  the  sun- 
light of  God's  presence,  in  the  full  enjoyment  of 
his  physical  powers  (dressing  and  keeping  the 
garden),  of  his  intellectual  faculties  (naming  the 
animals),  and  of  social  relations,  his  happiness  de- 
pending on  his  obedience., —  these  are  the  religious 
lessons  of  these  chapters.  That  these  stories  did 
show  what  the  people  who  told  them  and  the 
iJtfcFadyen,  "The  Messages  of  the  Old  Testament." 


More  Morning  Stories  99 

inspired  man  who  committed  them  to  writing 
actually  believed,  is  the  ethical  teaching  of  the 
chapters.  How  profoundly  this  teaching  influ- 
enced them  —  for  example,  that  temptation  in 
itself  is  not  wrong  —  is  shown  in  subsequent 
stories,1  such  as  that  of  Abraham  and  of  David 
when  God  Himself  is  pictured  as  the  tempter. 
The  later  author  of  Job  has  a  different  concep- 
tion, yet  still  God  is  represented  as  allowing  and 
even  as  making  use  of  temptation.  By  the  time 
that  Chronicles  were  written  this  idea,  no  longer 
understood  in  the  truly  ethical  sense  of  the  old 
Genesis  writer,  was  repudiated,  and  Satan  was 
made  the  tempter  of  David,  and  this  is  interest- 
ing precisely  as  it  sets  off  by  contrast  the  better 
ethical  sense  of  the  earlier  writer.  That  the 
writer  of  these  chapters  had  a  double  object  in 
view  —  to  preserve  the  traditions  of  the  race  and, 
at  the  same  time,  to  make  them  embody  the  reli- 
gion of  Jehovah2  —  is  the  historical  truth  to  be 
drawn  from  these  chapters.  That  the  stories  were 
originally  attempts  to  solve  moral  mysteries  —  the 
mystery  of  sin,  the  mystery  of  death,  the  mystery 
of  pain,  the  mystery  of  separation  from  God  —  is 
the  literary  truth.  And  all  these  so  work  to- 

1  Gen.  xxii.  1 ;  2  Sam.  xxiv.  1,  lOff. 

2  The  proper  word  is  Jahveh,  but  the    Kevised    Version 
makes  the  corrupt  vocalization  current. 


100  Telling  Bible  Stories 

gether,  at  once  to  prove  the  inspiration  of  the 
book  of  Genesis  and  to  show  the  true  character 
of  inspiration,  as  to  set  the  children  thus  "brought 
up  upon  "  Bible  stories  forever  beyond  the  reach 
of  those  who  attempt  to  reduce  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  the  level  of  the  scriptures  of  other 
peoples. 


CHAPTER   IV 

BEFORE  THE  FLOOD  AND  AFTEK 

Genesis  iv.  1—16 

I 

THE  story  of  Cain  and  Abel  contains  much  for 
the  little  child,  and  like  those  which  precede  it 
should  be  told  to  him  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the 
words  of  the  Bible.  The  meaning  of  the  story  is 
most  profound,  yet  on  its  very  surface  lie  two 
truths  which  even  the  youngest  story-hearing 
child  understands.  The  first  is  that  people  natur- 
ally want  to  offer  something  to  God.  It  is  the 
same  desire  which  makes  every  little  child  love  to 
help  mother  (and  if  he  soon  outgrows  the  lovely 
impulse  it  is  the  mother's  fault),  the  same  which 
gives  him  joy  when  he  adds  his  penny  to  the  offer- 
ing in  church,  knowing  —  though  without  under- 
standing how  —  that  he  is  giving  it  to  God.  That 
was  why  the  shepherd  Abel  brought  some  of  his 
little  lambs,  and  the  farmer  Cain  some  of  his  good 
fruit,  for  an  offering  to  God.  The  second  truth 
is  in  beautiful  accord  with  the  child's  earliest 
social  instinct ;  —  his  delight  in  watching  baby,  in 

101 


102    ^  C  ^  { \  \l  J  Celling '  Bible  Stories 

being  his  brother's  keeper  ;  —  and  though  this  truth 
is  taught  only  by  the  contrast  of  Cain's  repudia- 
tion of  the  duty,  the  little  child's  own  experience 
of  times  when  baby  seemed  a  trouble,  rather  than 
a  joy,  makes  him  understand  that  too. 

He  can  understand  that  God  was  pleased  with 
Abel's  offering  because  Abel  was  lovingly  longing 
to  please,  and  that  He  was  displeased  with  Cain's 
offering  because  Cain  had  not  "done  well."  The 
rest,  too,  he  can  understand,  dark  as  is  the  shadow 
that  rests  upon  it.  When  we  are  naughty  we 
love  nobody,  not  even  our  own  brother.  He 
knows  at  three  years  old  quite  as  well  as  if  he 
were  thirty  that  it  is  naughtiness  that  makes  him 
sometimes  cross  and  selfish  with  his  brother,  and 
it  is  not  hard  for  him  to  accept,  however  little  he 
may  understand,  the  fact  that  the  act  of  Cain  in 
killing  his  brother  was  the  dreadful  outcome  of 
selfishness.  A  little  later  the  story  may  be  told 
in  fuller  detail,  though  still  mainly  in  the  Bible 
words ;  and  by  the  time  the  child  is  about  seven 
years  old  the  mother  should  be  prepared  to  answer 
the  questions  that  will  surely  arise  in  his  mind, 
notwithstanding  his  early  instinctive  sympathy 
with  the  story. 

This  child  will  not  make  the  mistake  which 
many  wise  expositors  have  made,  of  supposing 
that  the  things  offered  by  these  brothers  had  to 


Before  the  Flood  and  After.  103 

do  with  the  "  respect "  of  God  for  their  offering. 
The  mother  has  not  so  far  departed  from  the 
spirit  of  true  Bible  story  telling  as  to  use  the 
word  sacrifice,  which  the  Bible  does  not  use,  and 
she  has  therefore  not  found  it  necessary  to  antici- 
pate the  stories  of  later  years  with  any  sugges- 
tions of  the  Jewish  sacrificial  system  or  any 
theological  implications  of  the  death  of  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is,  indeed,  precisely  here  that  Abel's 
death  differs  from  that  of  Christ,  and  his  offering 
from  Christ's  offering  of  Himself  —  they  were  not 
for  others.  Abel  no  more  perceived  that  he  was 
his  brother's  keeper,  than  Cain  did  ;  and  his  offer- 
ing was  acceptable  to  God,  not  because  it  was  a 
type  of  the  death  of  Christ  for  the  salvation  of 
the  world,  but  because  it  was  a  gift  of  love.  And 
Cain's  offering  was  rejected,  not  because  it  was  of 
the  fruits  of  the  earth,  and  therefore  "  unbloody," 
but  because  it  was  not  offered  in  an  obedient,  that 
is,  a  loving,  spirit.  Each  brought  precisely  what 
he  ought  to  bring, — that  which  he  had, — and  this 
is  the  lesson  for  the  child,  one  which  he  may  carry 
with  him  all  his  life. 

Observe  —  the  mother  may  point  it  out  to  her 
child  of  ten  and  even  of  seven  —  that  the  story 
speaks  first  of  God's  interest  in  the  man,  and  only 
after  that  of  His  interest  in  the  offering.  The 
question  was  not  which  gift  was  most  pleasing  to 


104  Telling  -Bible  Storie* 

God,  but  which  soul.  And  here,  to  the  child  of 
ten  or  twelve,  the  lesson  may  be  taught  which 
in  later  years  our  social  system  will  make  it  so 
hard  for  him  to  learn,  that  it  is  always  the  soul, 
and  never  the  circumstances,  that  measures  the 
worth  of  man  or  woman0 

How  did  Cain  and  Abel  know  that  God  was 
pleased  or  displeased?  The  child  is  sure  to  ask 
sooner  or  later.  This  is  a  story  and  not  a  bit 
of  history,  and  the  mother  is  free  —  nay,  is  she 
not  compelled  ? —  to  answer  according  to  the  anal- 
ogy of  the  story.  In  a  few  minutes  we  hear  of 
God  as  talking  with  Cain,  trying  to  change  his 
heart  and  make  him  good  ;  why  not  believe  that 
He  had  spoken  His  approval  and  disapproval  in  the 
same  way  ?  Consistency  relieves  the  mother  from 
every  effort  to  give  historic  truth  to  her  narrative 
by  saying,  as  some  excellent  expositors  do,  that 
God  showed  His  sentiments  by  prospering  Abel 
and  not  prospering  Cain;  or,  as  others  do,  that  He 
spoke  to  them  in  their  hearts  by  the  voice  of  con- 
science. No  ;  let  the  story  be  the  story  that  it  is, 
self-consistent  throughout.  God  had  told  the 
brothers  how  pleased  He  was  with  Abel  and  his 
offering  and  how  displeased  with  Cain  and  his 
offering.  Instead  of  feeling  sorry  and  trying  to 
do  better,  Cain  did  as  some  children  do  when  they 
are  reproved,  —  he  went  about  sullenly,  with  a 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  105 

long  face  and  hanging  head.  And  then  God,  who 
was  Cain's  heavenly  Father  as  well  as  Abel's,  and 
who  wanted  him  to  be  good,  spoke  to  Cain  and 
asked  him  why  he  acted  thus.  "Why  is  thy 
countenance  fallen  ?  "  He  asked.  "  If  thou  doest 
well,  shall  it  not  be  lifted  up  ?  "  So  every  naughty 
child's  lowering  face  grows  bright,  and  his  head 
no  longer  hangs  down,  when  he  has  decided  to 
"do  well"  again.  "  And  if  thou  doest  not  well,  sin 
lieth  at  the  door,"  crouching  ready  to  spring, 
wanting  to  be  master  over  Cain,  "but  thou 
shouldest  rule  over  him." 

It  is  hardly  too  early,  at  any  age,  to  use  the 
Bible  idioms,  explaining  them  a  little  where  the 
context  does  not  make  them  clear-  We  may  bear 
in  mind,  however,  that  all  idioms,  though  our  usual 
modes  of  speaking,  are  equally  foreign  to  a  little 
child.  In  general,  children  take  words  for 
granted,  and  understand  them  by  degrees,  as  they 
become  familiar  with  them,  and  so  it  will  be  with 
the  idioms  of  oft-repeated  Bible  stories.  However, 
this  idiom  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  explain,  because 
a  very  little  child  will  be  greatly  interested  in  the 
explanation,  picturing  to  himself  sin  lying  like  a 
baby  lion  at  the  door  of  Cain's  heart.  If  Cain 
chose,  he  could  tame  the  young  lion  before  it  grew 
big  and  strong,  and  teach  it  to  obey  him,  but  if  he 
did  not  do  so  at  once,  the  lion  would  soon  grow 


106  Telling  Bible  Stories 

strong  enough  to  spring  upon  him  and  destroy 
him.  It  will  hardly  be  necessary  to  draw  out  in 
words  the  profound  meaning  of  the  little  allegory. 
The  child  will  understand. 

Something  has  evidently  dropped  out  from  the 
eighth  verse  of  this  story,  and  it  will  be  wise  to 
supply  it  as  the  Jews  do,  by  telling  how  after  God 
had  tried  to  make  Cain  resolve  to  be  good,  "  Cain 
said  to  Abel  his  brother,  'Let  us  go  into  the 
field.' '  We  may  believe  that  Abel  was  glad  to 
go,  thinking  that  Cain  was  ready  to  be  friends 
again.  Ah,  no  !  While  they  talked  together  in 
the  field,  Cain  killed  his  brother  !  That  crouch- 
ing baby  lion  had  grown  strong,  and  had  got  the 
best  of  him.  This  is  where  envy  and  jealousy  and 
bad  feeling  end  ! 

Now  God  spoke  to  Cain  again,  but  in  what  a  dif- 
ferent way  !  He  was  not  now  trying  to  induce  him 
to  be  good,  but  punishing  him  for  his  dreadful  sin. 
And  yet  even  a  child  of  seven  can  be  shown, 
especially  if  he  already  knows  the  story  of  the 
disobedience  and  punishment  of  Adam  and  Eve, 
that  God  was  merciful  to  Cain  even  when  he  pun- 
ished him,  as  a  father  always  is  when  He  punishes 
his  child.  God  had  sent  Adam  and  Eve  out  of 
paradise  that  they  might  learn  by  hard  work  and 
sorrow  to  be  good.  Now  He  sent  Cain  away  from 
his  home  and  his  family,  where  he  would  have  to 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  107 

work  even  harder.  Cain  did  not  want  to  go  away 
from  his  family ;  he  was  afraid  that  some  one 
would  kill  him,  for  his  conscience  told  him  that  he 
deserved  to  be  killed.  And  God,  who  was  still 
the  loving  Father  of  this  wicked  man,  gave  him  a 
sign  by  which  he  could  know  that  his  Father  God 
was  still  watching  over  him  and  would  not  let  any 
one  kill  him.1  And  so  Cain  went  away,  and  built 
a  city,  and  lived  all  the  rest  of  his  life  away  from 
his  father  and  mother,  and  without  the  love  of 
God  in  his  heart. 

When  the  children  are  older,  and  have  studied 
ancient  history,  this  story  may  be  considerably  am- 
plified in  accordance  with  what  they  have  learned, 
or  may  understand  by  analogy  with  what  they  have 
learned.  The  ancient  peoples  always  looked  for 
some  visible  sign  that  their  offerings  were  accepted 
by  their  gods.  Almost  anything  in  nature  would 
do,  —  a  rustling  in  the  trees,  birds  lighting  on 
the  offering,  or  any  such  thing.  Probably  some- 
thing of  the  sort  was  in  the  old  folk  tale  which  this 
writer  was  retelling  in  order  to  make  the  Israelites 
understand  about  God ;  but  he  left  out  all  that,  for 
it  did  not  help  to  make  God  seem  real  to  those  who 
would  read  it,  and  this  was  what  he  wanted  to  do. 

1The  best  rendering  is  not  to  the  effect  that  God  put  a 
mark  upon  Cain  to  distinguish  him,  but  that  He  gave  to  Cain 
a  sign  or  mark  by  which  to  realize  God's  presence. 


108  Telling  Bible  tftorie* 

These  children  of  twelve  or  thirteen,  having 
been  told  the  Bible  stories  as  the  Bible  tells  them, 
will  not  wonder  where  the  people  were  who  might 
kill  Cain,  for  they  have  never  been  told  that  Adam 
and  Eve  and  their  two  sons  were  the  only  people 
upon  the  earth.  These  chapters  do  not  say 
so,  the  Bible  nowhere  says  so,  and  evidently 
this  writer  did  not  think  so.  Certainly  the 
later  Hebrew  people  thought  so,  and  until  a 
short  time  ago  nearly  every  one  thought  so.  But 
scientific  investigation  has  led  many  people  to  a 
different  conclusion,  or  at  least  to  admit  a  degree 
of  uncertainty  in  the  matter,  and,  whatever  may  be 
the  fact,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  teach 
our  children  anything  about  the  Bible  which 
is  not  there  and  which  they  may  one  day  have  to 
unlearn. 

It  will  be  best,  however,  to  wait  until  they  are 
still  older,  and  know  more  about  the  thoughts  and 
ideas  of  ancient  peoples,  before  going  more  largely 
into  this  fear  of  Cain  ;  but  when  the  time  comes 
—  at  perhaps  fourteen  or  fifteen  —  they  will  be 
much  interested  in  learning  that  Cain's  fear  was 
due  to  the  instinct  for  blood  revenge,  which  is 
common  to  all  peoples  in  early  times.  If  a  man 
killed  another  it  was  the  duty  of  a  relative  of 
the  dead  man  to  kill  his  murderer  and  then 
of  the  murderer's  relatives  to  kill  the  "  avenger  of 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  109 

blood,*'  and  so  the  "blood  feud"  would  last,  some- 
times, for  generations.  This  almost  universal 
human  instinct  survived  in  Scotland  until  quite 
recent  times,  as  the  young  people  know  who  read 
Scott's  novels.1  It  survives  to  this  day  among 
the  peasants  of  Italy  and  the  mountaineers  of  Ten- 
nessee and  Kentucky,  as  the  young  people  who 
read  the  newspapers  know,  and  it  appears  in  its 
most  debased  form  in  the  passion  for  lynching. 

Now  every  universal  custom  has  a  justification 
in  something,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  the 
early  age  of  the  world  the  law  of  blood  revenge 
served  a  good  purpose,  in  preventing  many  mur- 
ders among  the  widely  scattered  nomadic  peoples 
who  formed  a  certain  early  stage  of  civilization. 
The  Arabs  to  this  day  dread  to  commit  murder, 
because  they  believe  that  the  ghost  of  the  mur- 
dered man  hovers  over  his  grave  in  the  form  of  a 
bird  that  cries,  "  Give  me  drink  !  give  me  drink  !  " 
and  can  be  quieted  only  when  the  blood  of  the 
murderer  has  been  shed.  Cain  felt  all  this.  The 
story  does  not  tell  us  that  he  had  ever  heard  the 
command  "  Thou  shalt  not  kill,"  but  he  felt  that 
men  would  kill  him  for  killing  his  brother.  The 
voice  of  Abel's  blood  seemed  to  him  to  be  crying 
from  the  earth  in  so  loud  a  tone  that  some  one 
would  be  sure  to  hear  and  avenge  his  death. 
1  "The  Monastery." 


110  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

The  children  who  are  discussing  this  story  with 
their  mother  will  be  ready  to  perceive  that  at  the 
time  when  it  was  written  the  practice  of  blood 
revenge  had  grown  to  be  a  terrible  evil,  and  that 
this  writer  saw  an  opportunity  to  use  this  old  folk 
tale  about  Cain  and  Abel  to  show  that  God  does 
not  approve  of  blood  revenge. 

When  they  were  younger  they  saw  nothing  sig- 
nificant in  Cain's  reluctance  to  be  sent  away,  on 
the  ground  that  "from  thy  face  I  shall  be  hid." 
They  instinctively  felt  that  one  who  has  done 
dreadful  wrong  cannot  enjoy  the  light  of  God's 
face.  But  now  that  they  are  older  they  may  be 
shown  by  Cain's  objection  and  God's  reply  that 
the  writer  of  this  story  was  using  it  to  correct 
another  almost  universal  mistake.  The  Israelites 
of  that  early  time  believed  that  God  was  the  God 
of  Israel  only,  and  that  outside  of  Palestine  He 
was  not  to  be  found.  All  the  other  peoples  had 
the  same  idea  of  their  gods,  and  though  the  people 
Israel  thought  that  Jehovah  was  greater  than  all 
other  gods,  they  could  not  understand  how  He 
could  be  God  over  the  whole  earth.  So  devout  a 
man  as  David  believed  that  if  he  were  banished  to 
the  land  of  Moab,  he  would  be  obliged  to  serve 
another  god.  The  prophets  did  not  think  so,  nor 
the  most  devout  men  in  Israel,  but  most  of  the 
people  did  ;  and  this  story  was  meant  to  show  that 


Before  the  Mood  and  After  111 

Grod  rules  over  the  whole  earth  and  over  all  men, 
since  even  in  his  far  banishment  He  was  looking 
after  Cain,  and  able  to  punish  any  who  might  kill 
him. 

As  to  the  mark  that  was  "  given  for  "  Cain,  the 
Revised  Version  of  this  chapter  shows  that  it  was 
not,  as  used  to  be  thought,  some  mark  put  upon 
him  to  deter  others  from  killing  him  ;  it  was  a 
"  sign  "  for  Cain's  own  benefit,  as  the  rainbow  was 
a  sign  for  Noah  and  his  descendants  after  the 
flood.  We  do  not  know  what  the  sign  was  ;  it 
may  have  been  a  star  in  the  sky  or  any  other  nat- 
ural thing  which  would  remind  him  that  he  was 
not  too  far  away  from  God  to  be  protected  by 
Him. 

II 

At  this  point  in  the  children's  development, 
fourteen  or  fifteen,  they  will  be  interested  in 
learning  that  except  among  Bible-reading  people, 
Cain's  question,  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ? " 
is  the  universal  question.  A  celebrated  French 
pastor1  once  said  that  it  might  almost  be  taken 
for  the  device  of  humanity  outside  of  the  gospel. 
All  primitive  peoples  feel  justified  in  killing  a 
stranger  for  no  other  reason  than  that  he  is  a 
1  The  late  Eugene  Bersier. 


112  Telling  Bible  Stories 

stranger.  And  as  all  the  Bible  stories  are  meant 
sooner  or  later  to  lead  the  growing  mind  to 
Christ,  the  story  of  Cain  and  Abel  may  be  used  as 
the  basis  of  a  comparison  between  the  narrow 
ideas  of  brotherhood  of  even  the  most  civilized 
peoples,  of  even  the  noblest  Jews,  before  Christ, 
and  the  ideas  which  have  been  gained  from  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  A  few  extracts  from  such  a 
book  as  Brace's  "  Gesta  Christi "  might  be  given 
them  to  read,  that  they  may  see  the  enormous  dif- 
ference between  the  Christian  idea  of  brotherhood 
and  that  of  people  who  do  not  form  their  ideas 
on  the  teachings  of  Jesus.  And  it  will  interest 
any  bright  boy  or  girl  to  learn  that  the  first  hospi- 
tal was  founded  in  Ephesus,  where  the  beloved 
disciple  had  preached  that  God  is  love,  and  that 
the  first  orphanage  was  founded  there  not  long 
after.  Thus  this  story,  which  the  children  have 
known  all  their  lives,  may  take  its  place  at  the 
very  foundation  of  that  study  of  social  obligations 
which  happily  will  be  an  integral  part  of  the  edu- 
cation of  the  rising  generation. 

The  significance  of  this  little  story  does  not 
end  even  here.  With  the  study  of  literature, 
this,  like  the  preceding  stories,  should  be  re- 
lated to  the  world's  literature,  by  showing  that 
like  the  other  stories  it  has  its  place  in  the 
legends  of  many  peoples.  It  is  not  so  easy  to 


-  Before  the  Flood  and  After  113 

trace  as  some  others,  because  this  writer  so  care- 
fully omitted  every  feature  that  would  not  bear  a 
spiritual  meaning ;  but  they  will  find  analogies  to 
it  in  their  studies  or  their  encyclopaedia  researches. 
When  psychology  and  ethics  are  added  to  their 
school  curriculum  the  time  has  come  for  a  review 
of  the  whole  story  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
history  of  the  ethical  development  of  man.  The 
story  begins  by  showing  mankind,  shut  out  from 
paradise,  beginning  life  anew  in  a  new  environ- 
ment, consequent  upon  the  failure  of  Adam  and 
Eve  in  their  first  moral  conflict.  It  shows  them 
as  accommodating  themselves  freely  to  the  law  of 
labor,  each  brother  choosing  the  occupation  he 
preferred,  and  still  able  to  draw  near  to  God  with 
the  offering  of  faith.  It  shows  the  evil  results  of 
sin,  —  that  Adam  and  Eve  having  yielded  to  the 
tempter,  an  external  tempter  is  no  longer  needed, 
temptation  may  come  from  within  a  man's  own 
heart.  It  shows,  too,  what  comes  of  separation 
from  God, — such  a  separation  from  brother  man,  in 
heart,  as  to  result  in  murder.  Yet  as  the  young 
people  have  already  learned  that  good  came  out  of 
the  first  failure,  even  the  acquisition  of  moral  char- 
acter, so  it  might  have  come  even  out  of  the  second 
most  woful  failure.  Cain,  driven  to  shift  for  him- 
self, builds  a  city,1  —  an  advance  upon  nomad  life, 
1  Gen.  iv.  16-24. 


114  Telling  Bible  Stories 

—  and  becomes  the  father  of  those  who  introduced 
civilized  arts  into  the  world,  —  Tubal-Cain  the  first 
artificer  in  bronze  and  iron,  Jabal  the  first  musician, 
Lamech  the  first  poet.  If  Cain  had  but  returned 
to  obedience  this  advance  would  have  blessed  the 
world,  instead  of  ending  in  corruption  and  the 
flood. 

These  concluding  verses  of  the  story  are  not 
historical  facts  any  more  than  the  others ;  like 
them,  they  are  psychological  facts,  and  the  time 
is  rapidly  passing  when  the  mother  will  make  the 
mistake  of  giving  to  them  any  other  than  psycho- 
logical significance.  But  it  is  possible,  from  this 
story,  to  unfold  to  the  thoughtful  young  mind 
truths  of  greater  than  psychological  importance. 
The  narrative  has  the  deepest  spiritual  signifi- 
cance. Cain  and  Abel  were  types,  the  first  of 
the  fit,  the  second  of  the  unfit,  to  survive.  Cain, 
adapting  himself  to  his  environment,  became  the 
father  of  an  active,  intelligent,  civilized  race. 
Abel,  unfit  for  his  environment,  was  cut  off  in 
his  youth.  The  names  their  mother  gave  them 
at  birth  were  typical :  Cain  was  a  man,  Abel  was 
but  a  breath.  Yet  where  are  the  descendants  of 
Cain?  While  Abel,  being  dead,  yet  speaketh. 
His  life-work  still  goes  on.  His  was  a  type  of 
the  sacrificial  life,  and  the  sacrificial  life  is  the 
true  life,  —  nay,  since  Christ  made  the  ideal  a 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  115 

reality,  it  is  the  only  life  worth  living.  In 
Abel  the  sacrificial  idea  was  but  a  spark ;  but 
to  quote  again  words  of  the  blind  seer,  that 
spark  "became  a  candlestick  with  Abraham,  a 
lamp  with  Moses,  a  fire  with  the  prophets  of 
Judah,  until  at  last  it  burst  into  a  conflagration 
on  the  summit  of  Calvary."1  At  this  conflagra- 
tion thousands  of  martyr  men  and  women  have 
lighted  their  candles,  from  the  apostles  James 
and  Paul  to  Coleridge  Patteson  and  the  Chinese 
Christians.  They  have  carried  the  torch  of  sacri- 
fice into  every  country  on  God's  earth ;  and  every 
thoughtful  youth  must  perceive  that  however  daz- 
zling may  appear  the  millionaire's  success,  the  scien- 
tist's reputation,  the  poet's  renown,  it  pales  before 
this  flame  of  sacrifice  which  "  has  ultimately  given 
its  law  to  man  as  man."  By  it  pilot  and  engineer 
die  at  their  posts,  that  the  burning  ship  may  bring 
others  to  land  and  safety ;  by  it  Father  Damien 
gives  himself  to  the  comforting  of  lepers,  and 
dying,  his  work  is  taken  up  by  women  and  by  men 
who  will  not  be  denied  the  privilege ;  by  it  nurse 
and  doctor  brave  pestilence,  and  the  little  child 
risks  life  to  save  another  child  from  drowning. 
Nay,  it  has  come  to  inspire  even  those  whose 
highest  ideal  is  wealth,  and  by  it  men  take  all 
risks  for  the  sake  of  this  low  ideal.  Let  the  chil 
1  Matheson,  "  Representative  Men  of  the  Bible." 


116  Telling  BiUe  Stories 

dren  in  Christian  households  be  brought  up  with 
sacrifice  as  their  life  principle,  and  the  new  para- 
dise will  soon  descend  from  heaven  to  earth,  for 
all  men  will  have  been  brought  into  harmony  with 
the  inner  principle  of  God  Himself,  who  so  loved 
us  that  He  sent  His  Son  to  die  for  us. 

Cain,  the  archetype  of  sin,  is  the  antithesis  of 
Christ,  as  the  Apostle  John  perceived,1  and  though 
an  eminently  successful  man,  who  would  desire 
to  imitate  him  ?  Abel,  the  "  righteous,"  2  was  only 
a  faint  foreshadowing  of  Him  whose  blood  crieth 
louder  than  that  of  Abel,  and  for  better  things3 
—  not  vengeance,  but  pardon.  Who  would  not 
rather  die  Abel's  death  than  live  Cain's  life  ? 

One  thing  more  this  story  shows,  and  shows  it 
alike  to  little  child  and  fallen  man,  —  the  in- 
finite yearning  of  God  over  men,  however  guilty, 
and  His  longing  for  the  companionship  of  the  chil- 
dren He  has  made.  The  half -understood  desire  for 
God  which  impelled  Cain  and  Abel  to  bring  their 
offerings  gave  joy  to  the  heart  of  God.  It  was  be- 
cause He  longed  for  fuller  companionship  with  Cain, 
that  He  tried  by  remonstrance  and  persuasion  to 
bring  him  to  a  better  mind.  Oh,  pathetic  and 
dreadful  thought,  that  God  should  try  to  bring  His 
child  to  such  a  mind  that  He  can  commune  with 
him  in  love,  and  try  in  vain  ! 

1 1  John  iii.  12-16.         2  Ib.  12.         *  Heb.  xii  24. 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  117 

God  loves  to  be  longed  for,  He  loves  to  be  sought, 
For  He  sought  us  Himself,  with  such  longing  and  love; 

He  died  for  desire  for  us,  marvellous  thought ! 
And  He  yearns  for  us  now  to  be  with  Him  above.1 


Ill 

Genesis  v.  21—24 

In  the  fifth  chapter  of  Genesis,  in  the  midst  of 
a  dull  record  of  names  which  to  the  little  child 
have  no  meaning,  but  to  which  as  a  boy  he  may 
later  return  with  interest,  flashes  out  one  of  the 
most  gemlike  stories  of  the  Old  Testament.  No 
child  is  so  young  as  not  to  be  impressed  with  the 
story  of  Enoch;  the  man  who  loved  God  so  much, 
and  who  walked  with  Him,  because,  as  some  one 
has  said,2  he  was  going  the  same  way.  The  story 
is  very  short,  but  it  awakens  long  thoughts  in  the 
little  child's  mind.  Let  no  mother  tell  her  child 
that  Enoch  went  to  heaven  without  dying.  He 
does  not  know  what  dying  means,  and  the  story 
says  nothing  about  it.  The  entire  force  of  the 
narrative  is  that  the  man  who  loves  God  and  walks 
with  Him  has  no  concern  at  all  with  death.  He 
has  eternal  life.  His  life  is  so  full  of  God  that 
"What  seems  death  is  transition."  All  there  is 
to  tell  the  little  child  is  the  lovely  story  of  the 
i  F.  W.  Faber.  a  Dr.  M.  A.  Dods, 


118  Telling  Bible  Stories 

man  who  pleased  God  so  much  that  He  took  him 
home  to  live  with  Him  in  heaven. 

The  school  children  will  learn  before  long  that 
the  minds  of  men  in  early  days  were  full  of  this 
immortal  hope  of  reaching  eternal  happiness  with- 
out passing  through  death.  In  his  Livy,  the  boy 
may  read  that  Romulus,  one  of  the  twin  founders 
of  Rome,  went  to  the  land  of  the  blest  without 
dying  —  so  did  the  Greek  Ganymede  and  Hercules 
and  the  Assyrian  Queen  Semiramis  and  the  Baby- 
lonian Xisuthrus.  It  is  the  natural  human  protest 
against  death,  the  protest  which  our  Lord  answered 
when  He  said,  "  He  that  liveth  and  believeth  in  me 
shall  never  die."  The  mother  can  say  all  this  to  her 
children  of  twelve  and  fourteen,  and  they  will  be 
deeply  impressed  when  she  points  out  to  them  the 
essential  difference  between  all  these  mythological 
fancies  and  the  Bible  story.  For  mythology  dei- 
fies all  these  translated  people ;  they  become  gods 
or  demigods.  Enoch,  on  the  contrary,  remained 
man  all  through,  and  was  made  the  type  of  the 
perfect  human  being,  the  ideal  of  human  goodness. 
He  walked  with  God,  he  had  no  separate  interests; 
even  before  his  translation,  the  writer  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  says,  "  he  had  this  testimony,  that 
he  pleased  God."  His  capacity  for  God  fellowship 
was  perfect  ;  but  it  was  human,  and  therefore  the 
ideal  for  each  one  of  us.  Thus  his  life  becomes  a 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  119 

revelation  that  every  young  person  may  appro- 
priate as  something  possible  for  himself,  —  to  meet 
God  now,  and  walk  with  Him. 

These  children  will  be  interested  when  their 
mother  tells  them  that  Enoch  played  an  important 
part  in  Jewish  legend.  The  Apocryphal  books 
have  much  to  say  about  him.  He  was  believed  to 
possess  all  wisdom,  and  one  of  these  books  is 
devoted  to  "  The  Secrets  of  Enoch."  It  was  an 
instinctive  recognition  that  "  the  fear  of  the  Lord 
is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,"  the  idea  that  superior 
piety  must  argue  superior  wisdom.  They  will 
also  be  quite  able  to  recognize  the  difference  be- 
tween the  legend  of  Enoch's  translation  and  that 
of  other  ancient  heroes.  In  none  of  them  is  any 
religious  meaning  attached  to  the  escape  from 
death  ;  but  the  story  of  Enoch  foreshadowed  the 
teaching  of  our  Lord,  that  "  this  is  life  eternal,  to 
know  God." 

IV 
Genesis  vi.  5—29 

No  story  is  easier  to  tell  the  little  children  than 
that  of  Noah,  and  if  it  is  made  concrete  by  the 
possession  of  that  very  unsesthetic  toy,  the  Noah's 
ark,  so  much  the  better.  Two  lessons  from  this 
story  the  youngest  children  will  understand :  that 


120  Telling  Bible  Stories 

wickedness  must  be  punished,  and  God's  loving 
care  of  man's  need,  the  lovely  symbolism  of  the 
rainbow,  connecting  heaven  with  earth.  The 
older  children  will  not  be  puzzled  by  the  fact  that 
the  rainbow  must  have  been  seen  by  Noah  and  his 
sons  many  times  before  the  flood,  —  of  course  it 
had, —  but  never  before  had  they  understood  the 
suggestion  of  the  rainbow.  Now  God  appointed 
it  for  a  sign,  that  the  tie  between  earth  and  heaven 
had  not  been  destroyed  by  the  flood,  or  by  the 
wickedness  which  had  made  the  flood  necessary. 
The  older  children  will  have  learned  in  ancient 
history  and  mythology  that  flood  legends  are 
found  among  nearly  every  people,  —  Greek,  As- 
syrian, Persian,  Indian,  Scandinavian,  probably 
those  of  Mexico  and  South  America  and  even 
of  South  Africa,  —  and  it  may  be  well  to  show  them 
that  this  fact  does  not  argue  that  the  flood  actu- 
ally covered  the  entire  world.  Rather,  the  memory 
of  some  awful  catastrophe  occurring  in  the  early 
home  of  mankind  was  carried  with  them  by  the 
people  in  their  wide  migrations.  As  with  most 
other  legends,  we  find  in  Babylonia  the  one  which 
most  nearly  resembles  the  story  of  the  flood  in 
Genesis.  This  fact  makes  it  very  profitable  for 
the  school  children  to  read  the  Babylonian  account 
and  observe  the  differences,  that  they  may  again 
see  how  the  inspired  mind  of  the  Genesis  writer 


Before  the  Mood  and  After  121 

turned  to  deep  religious  teaching  a  legend  which 
was  the  common  property  of  all  men.  The  Baby- 
lonian legend,  too,  was  worked  over  by  a  highly 
intelligent  mind,  as  is  shown  in  an  inscribed  brick 
excavated  about  thirty  years  ago  in  that  region. 
This  brick  was  a  part  of  the  library  of  the  great 
conqueror  Asurbanipal,  who  lived  668-626  B.C., 
and  it  is  the  literary  treatment  of  the  ancient 
legend.1  The  likenesses  with  the  Genesis  story 
are  very  striking  :  the  god  Ea  commands  Hasis- 
adra  to  build  an  ark ;  there  is  a  seven  days'  down- 
pour of  rain  ;  birds  are  sent  out,  first  a  dove,  then 
a  swallow,  then  a  raven,  which  feeds  on  the  float- 
ing carcasses  —  even  the  rainbow  and  the  covenant 
are  in  the  Assyrian  story.  The  deluge  reaches 
unto  heaven  and  terrifies  even  the  gods.  The 
terror  of  the  earth  people  is  vividly  described 
and  the  awful  sight  of  their  corpses  floating  on 
the  water.  The  account  concludes  with  the  de- 
parture from  the  ark,  the  altar,  and  the  sacrifice : 
"  the  gods  smelt  the  savor  and  gathered  like  flies 
over  the  sacrifice."  In  all  this  there  is  no  religious 
sentiment,  the  deluge  has  no  moral  purpose,  it  was 
a  mere  caprice  of  the  god  Ea,  who  also  by  mere 
caprice  selected  Hasisadra  to  be  saved.  The 
revelation  of  Israel's  God  in  the  Genesis  story 

1  A  translation  may  be  found  in  any  library,    with  the 
librarian's  help. 


122  Telling  Bible  Stories 

is  all  the  more  impressive  by  contrast.  In  fact, 
the  story  is  not  so  much  the  history  of  Noah  as 
the  history  of  God  Himself,1  so  marvellously  does 
this  story  reveal  Him  in  His  relation  to  man. 

The  children  at  this  age  will  not  be  in  the  least 
disturbed  by  having  learned  that  Ararat  is  not 
the  highest  mountain  in  the  region,  nor  by  any 
calculation  showing  that  an  ark  of  the  size  de- 
scribed could  not  by  any  possibility  have  con- 
tained two  of  every  species  of  animals.  Nor  will 
they  ask  how  the  writer  knew  the  depth  of  the 
water.  These  questions  trouble  those  expositors 
who  insist  on  considering  these  chapters  as  literal 
history,  but  these  children  have  not  been  so 
taught. 

It  will  therefore  be  something  that  the  mother 
will  encourage,  and  not  check,  when  the  children, 
in  their  interest,  study  the  chapters  so  closely  as 
to  discover  a  number  of  mutually  inconsistent 
statements,  as,  for  example,  that  two  and  that 
seven  of  each  species  of  animals  were  taken  into 
the  ark,  as  also  differing  periods  of  time  for  the 
storm.  It  is  not  necessary  for  the  mother  to 
point  out  things  of  this  kind,  but  when  the  chil- 
dren observe  them  let  her  be  glad.  Now  is  the 
time  to  show  them  that  the  inspired  writer,  who 
has  all  along  been  using  old  folk  tales  tc  teach 
1  Ewald. 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  123 

the  people  about  God,  has  here  woven  together 
two  or  more  legends  of  the  flood,  since  he  could 
make  a  fuller  narrative  by  doing  so.  It  will  be 
an  interesting  exercise  for  the  children,  on  a  rainy 
Sunday  afternoon,  to  try  to  separate  the  two 
legends  and  discover  their  differences,.  Thus 
they  will  gain  their  first  and  absolutely  safe 
introduction  to  that  Biblical  criticism  which  has 
so  often  unsettled  the  faith  of  those  who  have 
first  met  it  in  some  less  natural  way. 

There  is  so  much  in  this  story  of  value  for  the 
older  children,  capable  of  being  interested  in  the 
religious  and  ethical  development  of  mankind, 
that  it  is  impossible  here  even  to  touch  upon  it 
all.  In  general,  it  must  be  observed  that  as  the 
expulsion  from  paradise  and  the  exile  of  Cain 
gave  to  mankind  a  new  chance,  a  fresh  start,  so 
with  the  flood.  Wickedness  had  by  this  time  so 
prevailed  that  the  earth  needed  to  be  washed  from 
sin  ;  but  God  did  not  repeople  it  with  a  new  race 
set  above  the  possibility  of  wrong-doing  —  rather, 
the  race  of  man  was  given  a  new  opportunity. 
The  moral  necessity  of  the  catastrophe  is  empha- 
sized by  God's  long  attempt  —  in  the  preaching  of 
Noah  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  —  to  win  men 
back  to  goodness,  to  induce  a  voluntary  change  of 
heart. 

The   outstanding   feature   of  the   story  is   the 


124  Telling  Bible  Stories 

covenant,  which  henceforth  runs  through  the  his- 
tory of  Israel,  and  of  the  spiritual  Israel.  In  thia 
covenant  Noah  stands  as  representative  not  only 
of  all  men,  but  also  of  the  animal  creation ;  and  it 
will  be  worth  while  to  study,  through  the  entire 
Bible,  references  not  only  to  the  covenant,  but  to 
the  part  which  animals  bear  in  God's  thought  for 
man. 

The  emphasis  laid  upon  the  sanctity  of  life  is 
especially  worthy  of  note.  The  sons  of  Noah 
might  well  have  believed  that  God  held  life  cheap 
after  its  wide-spread  destruction.  Observe,  there- 
fore, the  insistence  upon  this  command,  and  that 
its  sanction  is  still  the  same  as  before  the  almost 
universal  appalling  wickedness, — that  man  is  made 
in  the  image  of  God.  The  principle  of  the  flood  is 
not  destruction  but  salvation,  as  was  that  of  the 
sentence  of  death  upon  Adam.  By  the  flood  the 
danger  of  departing  from  God  was  emphasized  for 
all  generations. 

Noah  was  the  renewer  of  the  world.  Abel  and 
Enoch  had  failed  to  make  their  environment 
better.  Abel  had  lived  for  himself,  Enoch  had 
lived  for  God,  but  had  been  unable  to  impress  the 
world  by  his  life  and  had  been  lifted  above  the 
world.  Noah  was  the  first  who  tried  to  save 
the  world.  The  building  of  the  ark  in  the  sight 
of  all  mankind  has  been  called  the  first  attempt 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  125 

at  reform,  and  so  it  was.  The  tragedy  of  Noah's 
life  was  not  the  flood  but  the  wickedness  ;  it 
made  his  loneliness  almost  like  the  loneliness  of 
Christ.  There  is  a  beautifully  suggestive  picture 
which  may  well  encourage  reformers  of  to-day, 
in  the  moment  when  Noah  walks  forth  from  the 
ark  upon  the  clean-washed  earth,  waiting  silently 
under  the  rainbow  of  hope.  Corruption  has  never 
conquered  the  world.1 

It  must  be  observed  by  the  older  children  that 
we  are  never  told  of  any  wicked  deeds  of  the  men 
of  Noah's  time,  but  simply  of  their  evil  imagina- 
tions. "  As  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he." 
It  is  evident  from  the  verses  lying  between  the 
story  of  Cain  and  this  story  that  Cain,  the  suc- 
cessful man,  and  not  Abel  the  righteous  man  or 
Enoch  the  God-transformed  man,  was  the  ideal 
of  that  time.  His  name  reappears  in  the  names 
men  gave  their  children  :  Tubal-cain,  Cainan  — 
he  was  their  hero.  Is  there  not  something  here 
for  our  time? 

1  The  rainbow  is  far  from  suggesting  to  all  peoples  the  re- 
ligious ideas  of  the  flood  story  in  Genesis.  The  Greek  Iris,  the 
goddess  of  the  rainbow,  is  the  sister  of  the  Harpies,  and  Iris 
herself  makes  use  of  the  bow  to  descend  to  earth  to  inspire 
men  with  madness. 


126  Telling  Bible  Storin 


Genesis  iv.  19—24 

The  intermediate  passages  just  referred  to  in- 
clude two  incidents  which  do  not  appeal  to  little 
children,  but  which  the  older  ones  may  hear  about 
with  profit.  The  story  of  Lamech,  with  his  "  Song 
of  the  Sword,"  which  is  properly  given  in  poetic 
form  in  the  Revised  Version,  reflects  the  delight 
of  the  ancient  world  in  scientific  discovery,  a 
delight  which  is  peculiarly  that  of  the  present 
age.  Lamech  glorifies  in  song  his  son's  discovery 
of  the  uses  to  which  bronze  and  iron  may  be  put. 
Tubal-cain  has  made  him  a  sword,  with  which, 
when  necessary,  he  can  avenge  himself.  But  inci- 
dentally, while  vaunting  himself  over  Cain,  he  also 
glorifies  him,  adopting  his  standards,  choosing  evil 
rather  than  good.1 

The  passage  which  introduces  the  story  of 
Noah,  Genesis  vi.  1,  2,  has  puzzled  many  commen- 

1  Lamech  and  his  family  are  familiar  characters  in  mythol- 
ogy. Apollo  in  his  character  of  protector  of  flocks  and  herds 
corresponds  to  Jabal,  as  the  inventor  of  the  flute  and  lyre  and 
the  god  of  song  he  answers  to  Jubal.  Tubal-cain  is  evidently 
Vulcan.  Naameh,  "the  beautiful,"  corresponds  to  Venus. 
Yet  in  the  Biblical  story  none  of  these  is  deified,  though  the 
writer's  deep  appreciation  of  the  benefits  they  rendered  to  the 
human  race  is  very  evident. 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  127 

tators,  but  it  need  not  puzzle  any  child  who  has 
studied  mythology.  The  story  is  evidently  mythi- 
cal, and  it  is  very  clearly  allied  to  the  grosser 
myths  of  paganism.  It  is  impossible  to  know  even 
superficially,  as  the  children  properly  study  them, 
the  myths  of  Greece  and  Rome,  not  to  say  of 
India  and  Egypt,  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  and  not 
see  in  this  passage  an  exact,  though  most  reticent, 
counterpart  of  their  unspiritual  and  naturalistic 
explanation  of  that  truth  which  is  so  incontro- 
vertible and  yet  so  mysterious,  —  the  kinship  of 
the  human  with  the  divine.  Greece,  with  all  her 
philosophy,  India,  with  all  her  idealism,  was  able 
to  explain  it  only  by  an  actual  union  resulting 
in  the  birth  of  demigods  and  heroes,  the  giants 
(Rephaim)  of  this  passage.  The  Bible  alone  of 
all  ancient  lore  offers  a  reasonable,  a  thinkable 
explanation  of  the  mystery.  It  is  not  found  in 
this  passage,  but  in  the  story  of  the  creation  of 
man  in  the  divine  image,  inbreathed  with  the 
divine  life.  How  it  was  possible,  after  that  noble 
and  satisfying  explanation,  for  the  author  of  Gene- 
sis to  incorporate  this  ancient  myth  into  his 
work,  is  to  be  explained  here,  as  we  have  already 
explained  some  things  in  the  story  of  Noah.  Evi- 
dently the  devout  writer  found  this  story  current 
among  the  people  for  whom  he  wrote,  and  he  as 
evidently  found  it  valuable  for  his  purpose  to  give, 


128  Telling  Bible  Stories 

by  putting  a  religious  meaning  into  a  myth  other- 
wise devoid  of  religious  character,  an  explanation 
of  that  baffling  mystery,  the  persistence,  not  only, 
of  sin,  notwithstanding  the  lessons  of  paradise 
and  of  Cain  and  Enoch,  but  also  its  apparent 
triumph.  We  must  remember,  and  must  show 
the  children,  that  the  Bible  was  given  to  a  child 
people,  who,  like  children  to-day,  were  often 
best  taught  through  the  imagination.  "  I  taught 
Ephraim  to  walk,  taking  him  on  my  arms,"  as  we 
support  the  faltering  steps  of  a  little  child  ;  and 
this  bit  of  ancient  folk-lore,  in  which  must  be 
some  guess  of  truth,  since  it  is  found  among  every 
people,  may  have  been  a  valuable  part  of  that 
early  training.  It  is  not  needed  for  the  early  train- 
ing of  our  children,  but  thus  reasonably  explained 
to  them  when  they  come  upon  it  in  their  read- 
ing, it  may  be  made  a  help  to  wean  them  from 
that  subjective  and  selfish  attitude  toward  the 
Bible  which  is  too  common  among  Christians, 
as  if  every  word  of  it  had  been  written  for  their 
personal  profit. 

Incidentally  it  will  be  a  matter  of  interest  to 
the  children  to  perceive  that  the  idolatry  of  mus- 
cle, of  athletic  strength,  so  prevalent  at  the  pres- 
ent day,  was  deemed  by  this  ancient  writer  a 
snare  to  the  men  of  old.  There  was  no  harm  in 
giants,  but  when  they  became  "  men  of  renown  " 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  129 

just  for  their  bigness  and  strength,  then  the  harm 
began,  and  then  it  was  that  God  saw  that  the 
wickedness  of  man  was  great. 


VI 

Genesis  x.  8—11 

Embedded  in  the  genealogical  account  of  the 
descendants  of  Noah  are  four  verses  which  will 
strike  any  boy's  imagination,  simply  by  their  sug- 
gestions, for  they  are  not  a  story.  They  tell  of 
Nimrod,  the  "mighty  hunter  before  Jehovah." 
There  are  only  one  or  two  allusions  to  Nimrod 
in  the  Bible,1  but  the  fact  that  his  fame  had  be- 
come proverbial  is  indicated  here,  and  ancient 
Assyrian  legend  is  full  of  him.  When  the  chil- 
dren come  to  study  ancient  geography  they  will 
find  the  name  Nimrod  frequently  occurring  in  the 
names  of  places,  Birs-Nimroud,  Tel-Nimroud,  etc. ; 
and  those  of  them  who  have  begun  to  study  the 
classics,  or  the  history  of  literature,  will  be  inter- 
ested to  know  that  Nimrod  is  the  hero  of  the 
oldest  epic  ever  written.  It  was  probably  written 
nearly  two  thousand  years  before  Christ,  to  ex- 
press the  sorrow  of  the  people  of  Erech  (one  of 
Nimrod's  cities)  when  that  city  was  conquered 
1 1  Chron.  i.  10  ;  Mic.  v.  6. 


130  Telling  Bible  Stories 

by  a  cruel  foreign  people ;  but  like  all  epics  it  em- 
bodies older  legends  and  myths,  and  the  deified 
Nimrod  is  its  hero.  Nimrod  occupies  large  space 
in  ancient  imagination  as  a  hunter  (as  we  have 
seen  from  the  proverb  in  Genesis),  and  also  as 
a  conqueror,  builder,  and  fortifier  of  cities.  He 
used  to  be  identified  with  the  constellation  Orion ; 
and  this  is  an  interesting  thing  to  tell  the  child 
when  the  stars  are  being  studied.  Those  re- 
searches which  are  being  carried  on  in  ancient 
Babylonia  have  brought  to  light  many  legends 
about  him,  and  he  is  found  identified  with  all  the 
cities  named  with  him  in  Genesis,  except,  as  yet, 
Accad. 

VII 

Genesis  xi.  1—9 

The  last  of  our  "  morning  stories  "  is  that  of 
Babel.  Its  peculiar  freshness,  and  artlessness  all 
its  own,  make  it  very  attractive  to  the  little  child. 
It  is  the  endeavor  of  the  ancient  people  to  account 
for  the  wide  scattering  of  races,  and  for  the  very 
inconvenient  fact  that  they  speak  different  lan- 
guages. This  is  not  a  world  legend ;  it  is  not 
found  among  other  peoples  of  that  region  of  the 
world,  not  even  at  Birs-Nimroud  (Borsippa), 
which  is  traditionally  the  site  of  Babel.  This  is 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  131 

interesting,  because  only  the  Hebrew  people  so 
realized  the  unity  of  humanity  in  their  relation- 
ship to  God  as  to  be  puzzled  by  the  facts  which  it 
attempted  to  explain. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  Greek  legend  of  the  giants 
scaling  the  heights  of  Olympus,  which  offers  a 
slight  suggestion  of  the  story,  and  Livingstone 
found  among  the  people  of  Lake  Ngami  an  ex- 
planation of  the  diversity  of  tongues  somewhat 
similar  to  this.  The  Jewish  rabbis  did  not,  indeed, 
always  attribute  this  story  to  the  desire  to  explain 
this  mystery.  They  taught  that  the  motive  of 
the  people  in  building  a  tower  which  should  reach 
up  to  heaven  was  to  support  the  sky  and  keep  it 
from  toppling  and  spilling  out  another  deluge; 
and  such  a  naive  idea  well  accords  with  the  im- 
pression which  the  tradition  of  the  deluge  must 
have  made  upon  a  primitive  people. 

The  explanation  of  the  name  Babel  (Confu- 
sion) given  by  this  old  writer  shows  that  he  did 
not  understand  Assyrian,  for  the  true  meaning  of 
Bab-el  is  the  gate  of  God.  But  his  motive  was  not 
to  teach  etymology ;  he  was  simply  indulging  in 
that  love  of  playing  with  words  which  is  very 
characteristic  of  Hebrew  writers.  The  explanation 
was  simply  a  pun,  or  rather  a  figure  of  speech,  a 
kind  of  play  with  words  that  children  delight 
in,  somewhat  as  if  they  were  to  say  that  Babel 


132  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

means  babble,  and  so  confusion  of  tongues.  The 
lightness  of  the  old  writer's  spirit,  shown  all 
through  this  narrative,  did  not  prevent  the  serious- 
ness of  his  motive,  which  was  purely  religious :  to 
show  the  evil  of  man  exalting  himself  against  his 
Maker,  and  seeking  his  own  glory  instead  of  the 
glory  of  God.  When  men  rebel  against  God  they 
become  discordant  among  themselves,  as  here  typi- 
fied by  the  confusion  of  their  speech. 

VIII 

I  have  failed  indeed  in  my  purpose  if  I  have  not 
by  this  time  made  it  clear  to  every  mother  who  has 
read  thus  far  that  there  is  absolutely  no  better 
way  than  by  these  stories  of  introducing  the  hu- 
man mind  to  the  great  universal  fundamental 
truths  —  truths  of  the  character  of  God  and  His 
relation  to  the  universe  and  to  man,  of  the  nature 
of  sin  and  its  deadly  effect  upon  man's  character 
and  destiny.  No  system  of  pedagogy,  no  psycho- 
logical insight,  can  devise  a  better  way  of  present" 
ing  these  great  truths  to  the  human  intelligence 
than  simply  by  telling  these  earliest  Bible  stories  to 
a  little  child.  I  have  tried  to  show  that  they  may 
be  so  told  to  a  very  little  child  as  to  need  no  revi- 
sion of  the  impression  they  have  made  in  his  later 
years ;  that  the  expanding  mind  of  the  boy  or  girl, 


Before  the  Flood  and  After  133 

working  upon  the  material  which  has  been  made 
familiar  to  it  by  much  repetition,  will  be  able,  by 
applying  its  subsequent  acquisitions  to  this  very 
material,  to  attain  to  larger  and  ever  larger  appre- 
hension of  these  truths. 

The  bent  of  mind  which  generations  of  teaching 
from  another  point  of  view  have  given  to  the 
mothers  of  this  generation  makes  it  hardly  possible 
too  earnestly  to  insist  that  the  purpose  of  these 
Genesis  stories  is  not  historical  but  religious,  or 
too  often  to  remind  them  that  their  own  purpose 
in  telling  Bible  stories  to  their  children  has  not 
been  so  much  to  teach  them  what  once  happened 
as  to  vitalize  their  natures  with  the  large  thoughts 
that  these  stories  suggest.  Hebrew  tradition,  as 
Ewald  has  said,  possesses  a  vivid  sense  of  truth 
and  fidelity,  of  sobriety  and  modesty,  and  an  aver- 
sion to  everything  immoderate,  vain,  and  frivolous. 
In  these  respects  it  is  a  whole  heaven  apart  from 
all  other  tradition ;  for  example,  the  Biblical 
writer  of  the  flood  story  omits  all  the  dramatic 
horrors  of  the  Babylonian  narrative,  —  the  terrors 
of  the  people,  the  corpses  floating  on  the  water, 
and  the  like. 

It  is  a  striking  fact  that  Hebrew  tradition  did 
not  make  the  earliest  patriarchs  semidivine,  demi- 
gods, as  other  tradition  invariably  does ;  they  are 
simply  men,  and  it  is  because  they  are  simply 


134  Telling  Bible  Stories 

men  that  these  traditions  are  so  valuable  for  us. 
The  legends  in  these  chapters  are  of  varied  origin, 
but  they  are  marvellously  adapted  to  the  religious 
belief  and  the  religious  needs  of  the  people  for 
whom  they  were  written.  "The  amalgamation 
of  these  legends,  and  their  infilteration  with  the 
spirit  of  a  higher  religion,  is  one  of  the  most  brill- 
iant achievements  of  the  people  Israel."1 

Their  adaptability  to  the  religious  needs  of 
to-day  is  hardly  less  remarkable,  for  they  reveal 
not  only  elemental  but  potential  humanity,  not 
only  what  man  once  did  but  what  he  may  always 
do.  When,  for  example,  was  the  lesson  of  the 
forbidden  fruit  more  imperatively  needed  than 
now,  when  social  conventions  more  than  imply 
that  experience  of  evil  is  necessary  for  the  en- 
largement of  the  soul  ?  What  Adam  gained  by 
eating  the  forbidden  fruit  was  not  culture,  but 
separation  from  God,  an  evil  conscience,  "the 
pain  of  not  being  holy."  Again,  when  did  the 
world  ever  more  urgently  need  to  hold  up  before 
itself  the  unique  ideal  of  immortality  shown  by 
Enoch,  that  immortality  is  not  fame  nor  heroic 
deeds  nor  even  continued  existence,  but  being 
with  God  ?  What  can  we  better  do  for  our  own 
children  than  to  fill  their  souls  with  such  ideals  ? 
1  Gunkel,  "  The  Legends  of  Genesis." 


CHAPTER  V 

A  PATRIARCH  STORY 

Genesis  xii.— xxiii. 

I 

WITH  the  story  of  Abraham  we  enter  upon  a 
new  story  class,  and  although  these  stories  are 
quite  as  well  adapted  to  the  youngest  children  as 
any  others  in  the  Bible,  it  may  help  the  mother  if 
we  begin  to-day  with  the  older  children,  and  set 
them  at  work,  some  Sunday  afternoon,  upon  a 
study  of  the  book  of  Genesis  as  a  book.  At  the 
head  of  the  book  stands  the  title  "  The  First  Book 
of  Moses,  called  Genesis."  If  we  could  read 
Hebrew  we  should  see  that  the  title  in  the 
Hebrew  Bible  consists  of  only  the  last  word, 
Bereshith,  "In-beginning,"  or,  as  Greek  scholars 
translated  it,  Genesis.  The  Hebrews  made  this 
word  the  title  simply  because  it  is  the  first  word 
of  the  book,  as  is  their  frequent  custom.1  But  it 
is  a  very  appropriate  title,  as  the  book  tells  about 

*For  example,  the  book  called  in  the  English  Bible  "The 
Lamentations  of  Jeremiah"  is  in  the  Hebrew  called  simply  by 
its  first  word,  <;How." 

135 


136  Telling  Bible  Stories 

the  beginnings  of  things.  The  other  title,  "  The 
First  Book  of  Moses,"  is  simply  traditional. 
Neither  in  the  book  itself  nor  elsewhere  in  the 
Bible  are  we  told  that  Moses  wrote  it.  Without 
doubt,  the  tradition  that  he  wrote  it  dates  from 
very  far  back.  The  Hebrews  believed  it  long 
before  the  time  of  Christ,  but  they  never  ex- 
pressed this  belief  by  putting  it  in  their  Bible. 
A  part  of  this  title  is,  indeed,  justified  ;  Genesis 
is  very  evidently  the  first  of  a  series  of  which  the 
general  subject  is  the  early  history  of  Israel.  We 
have  already  seen  that  to  the  Israelitish  writer 
this  history  dates  from  the  creation.  "  When  God 
said,  Let  there  be  light,  he  had  Abraham  in  view," 
says  the  Haggadic  commentary  of  the  Jewish 
rabbis.  But  as  to  the  authorship,  not  only  of 
this  first  book,  but  of  the  entire  series,  the  Bible 
says  not  a  word.  Even  our  Lord,  when  referring 
to  what  Moses  commanded,  does  not  so  much  as 
imply  that  he  wrote  the  books,  any  more  than  we 
imply  that  legislators  write  our  law  books  when 
we  quote  their  utterances. 

When  the  mother  is  explaining  these  things  to 
the  boys  and  girls  she  can  go  on  to  tell  them  that 
the  chapters  and  verses  are  an  arrangement  of 
comparatively  recent  date,  and  designed  for  con- 
venience, precisely  as  the  line  numbers  on  the 
margin  of  their  Homer  or  Virgil  or  Milton 


A  Patriarch  Story  137 

are.  None  of  the  old  manuscripts  of  the  Bible 
have  them.  They  were  made  by  a  Frenchman 
named  Richard,  about  the  fifteenth  century. 
Nevertheless,  the  book  of  Genesis  is  not  all 
one  piece,  nor  did  the  Hebrew  people  so  regard 
it.  Its  divisions  are  very  clearly  marked,  and 
the  boys  and  girls  will  be  interested  in  discover- 
ing these  for  themselves.  As  they  afford  a  clue 
to  some  essential  characteristics  of  the  book,  this 
research  will  be  quite  worth  while. 

To  begin  with,  the  volume  evidently  consists 
of  two  books.  The  first  of  these  books  contains 
the  first  eleven  chapters  ;  we  have  just  completed 
that  book  in  the  Bible  stories  already  told. 

The  second  book  begins  where  we  begin  to-day, 
with  the  call  of  Abraham,  and  it  includes  the 
stories  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob,  and  Joseph, — • 
the  patriarch  stories.  The  difference  between 
the  two  books  is  as  clear  as  possible. 

These  books  are  divided  into  chapters,  which, 
however,  are  not  equivalent  to  the  chapters  in 
our  Bible.  Each  chapter  has  a  title,  with  the 
exception  of  the  first  in  each  book,  which  needs 
no  title  precisely  because  it  is  the  first.  Alert- 
minded  children  will  easily  discern  where  and 
what  these  titles  are,  and  if  two  or  three  are 
working  together,  they  will  be  immensely  inter- 
ested in  a  sort  of  competitive  search  for  them,  — • 


138  Telling  Bible  titories 

who  will  find  them  soonest  or  in  greater  number. 
It  appears  that  each  chapter,  or  section,  is  a  genea- 
logical story,  or  at  least  "  the  generations  of '' 
something  ;  not  always  of  a  person,  as  the  very 
first  title  —  that  of  Section  Two  —  shows,  since  it 
is  "The  Generations  of  the  Heavens  and  of  the 
Earth "  ;  that  is,  it  is  the  story  of  creation  and 
of  Adam  and  Eve,  Cain  and  Abel.  It  begins  at 
Chapter  ii.  4,  in  our  Bible.  The  next  title  occurs 
in  the  first  verse  of  the  fifth  chapter,  and  shows 
that  Section  Three  is  "  The  Book  of  the  Generations 
(that  is,  the  descendants)  of  Adam."  It  contains 
the  Enoch  story,  and  the  mythological  story  de- 
signed to  show  how  evil  became  so  prevalent  as 
to  require  the  washing  of  the  earth  by  a  flood. 
The  fourth  section,  beginning  at  Chapter  vi.  9,  is 
"  The  Generations  of  Noah,"  and  tells  the  story 
of  the  Flood ;  the  fifth,  at  x.  1,  is  "  The  Genera- 
tions of  the  Sons  of  Noah,"  and  contains  the 
stories  of  Nimrod  and  of  Babel ;  the  sixth,  at 
xi.  10,  is  "The  Generations  of  Shem,"  and  in- 
cludes no  story  ;  the  seventh,  a  very  short  sec- 
tion, begins  at  xi.  27,  "  The  Generations  of 
Terah,"  and  has  only  five  verses.  Its  design  is 
to  introduce  the  story  of  the  next  book. 

Thus  we  have  in  seven  chapters  a  number  of 
exquisite  and  profoundly  significant  folk  tales,  set 
in  a  framework  of  genealogy,  designed  to  cover 


A  Patriarch  Story  139 

die  history  of  the  world  from  the  creation  to  the 
call  of  Abraham,  uthe  great  father  of  the  He- 
brews." The  second  book  is  of  like  character,  in 
that  it  consists  of  a  number  of  exquisite  stories  of 
the  Hebrew  people,  set  in  a  framework  of  gene- 
alogy. The  first  chapter,  or  section,  of  this  book, 
the  story  of  Abraham,  like  the  first  chapter  in  the 
first  book,  has  no  heading,  simply  because  it  is 
the  first  and  needs  none.  We  find  Section  Two 
at  Chapter  xxv.  12,  "  These  are  the  Generations 
of  Ishmael."  Section  Three  begins  at  the  nine- 
teenth verse  of  this  same  chapter,  "  The  Genera- 
tions of  Isaac  "  ;  Section  Four,  at  xxxvi.  1,  "  The 
Generations  of  Esau";  and  Section  Five,  at  xxxvii. 
2,  uThe  Generations  of  Jacob."  This  section 
goes  to  the  end  of  the  book. 

Thus  the  first  book  has  seven  sections  and  the 
two  books  together  twelve.  Both  these  numbers 
were,  with  the  Hebrews,  and  with  many  other 
primitive  peoples,  regarded  as  "  sacred  "  or  mysti- 
cal numbers,  and  it  is  useful  to  recognize  this  fact 
for  two  reasons.  The  first  chiefly  concerns  the 
mother,  clearly  pointing  as  it  does  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  scheme  of  the  book  of  Genesis  is 
a  mystical  scheme,  and  that  this  must  be  taken 
into  account,  as  we  have  done  hitherto,  in  seeking 
for  its  meaning.  No  other  book  in  the  Bible  has 
any  such  divisions,  and  evidently  none  other  has 


140  Telling  Bible  Stories 

precisely  such  a  purpose  as  this  book,  or  should 
be  interpreted  in  precisely  the  same  way.  The 
second  reason  is  of  practical  interest  for  the 
children,  whom  we  now  imagine  to  be  studying 
the  scheme  of  the  book  of  Genesis.  They  have 
come  to  that  point  in  their  school  education  when 
they  are  sent  to  a  library  to  look  up  things,  and 
thus  have  learned  how  to  use  books ;  and  it  will 
be  intensely  interesting  to  them,  and  a  valuable 
exercise  both  religious  and  intellectual,  to  study 
the  use  and  significance  of  mystical  numbers  in 
the  Bible  —  three,  seven,  twelve,  forty,  a  hundred, 
a  thousand.  No  exercise  will  be  more  valuable 
as  a  means  of  divesting  the  child's  mind  of  the 
notion,  if  he  has  unfortunately  been  permitted  to 
acquire  it,  or  to  preserve  him  from  acquiring  it, 
that  truth  is  synonymous  with  literalness  ;  none 
will  be  more  valuable  for  making  him  feel  the  im- 
portant relation  of  imagination  to  truth.  It  is 
almost  impossible  for  us  grown  people  to  attain  to 
this  freedom  of  mind,  so  fixed  are  we  in  the  bond- 
age of  preconceived  ideas,  but  if  we  begin  right 
with  the  children  they  need  never  wear  our  mental 
fetters.  There  is  no  more  deadly  enemy  to  spirit- 
ual truth  than  prosaic  literalness. 


A  Patriarch  Story  141 


II 

The  stories  of  the  first  book  of  Genesis,  as  we 
may  now  call  it,  those  which  shine  out  like  gems 
from  their  setting  of  dull  genealogical  record  in 
the  first  eleven  chapters,  are  true  folk  tales,  re- 
deemed from  mythology  not  only  by  the  truths 
about  God,  of  which  they  have  been  made  the 
vehicle,  but  also  by  their  high  spirituality  and 
ethical  significance.  They  show  God  "acting  in 
the  natural  world  and  in  the  soul  of  man."  As 
one  turns  the  page  between  the  eleventh  chapter 
and  those  that  follow,  he  becomes  immediately 
conscious  of  having  to  do  with  another  sort  of 
literature.  The  stories  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob, 
and  Joseph  are  not  folk-lore,  nor  do  they  in  the 
smallest  degree  suggest  the  mythology  of  any 
ancient  people.  We  should  not  think  of  saying 
of  them,  as  we  have  properly  said  of  the  preced- 
ing stories,  that  they  are  the  product  of  inspira- 
tion working  upon  material  which  has  sprung  out 
of  the  wondering  questioning  of  primitive  minds 
as  to  the  causes  of  natural  and  moral  phenomena. 
There  is  an  essential  difference  between  the 
patriarch  stories  and  the  earlier  narratives  of  the 
book  of  Genesis  which  is  clear  to  every  reader. 
Yet  it  may  not  be  easy  to  say  just  what  the  dif- 


142  Telling  Bible  Stories 

ference  is  until  we  have  established  a  relation 
between  these  patriarch  stories  and  the  literary 
culture  of  to-day.  It  is  the  mother's  high  privi- 
lege to  guard  her  children  from  the  fundamental 
error  of  most  Bible  reading  of  to-day,  that  of 
making  it  an  exercise  apart,  unrelated  to  the 
knowledge  which  has  been  otherwise  gained. 
The  method  of  telling  Bible  stories  which  has 
already  been  described  establishes  that  safeguard ; 
and  just  as  the  mother  has  shown  how  the  "  morn- 
ing stories "  of  Genesis  are  related  to  myth,  so 
she  will  show  that  these  patriarch  stories  belong 
in  the  literary  class  that  we  call  legend.  They 
are  not  history,  any  more  than  the  earlier  stories 
are.  The  children  will  instinctively  feel  the  very 
real  difference  between  the  patriarch  stories  and 
the  narratives  of  the  book  of  Kings,  for  example, 
and  an  intelligent  classification  would  certainly 
put  them  into  an  entirely  different  category.  A 
profound  student  of  the  Old  Testament a  very 
suggestively  compares  the  stories  in  the  first  part 
of  Genesis  with  Hesiod,  and  those  in  the  second 
part  with  Homer.  They  may  with  equal  correct- 
ness be  likened  to  the  old  sagas  of  Scandinavia, 
which  tell  the  stories  of  the  families  that  first 
settled  in  the  country.  Another  distinction  may 
be  made  between  them.  In  the  earlier  stories 
i  Rev.  J.  P.  Peters,  Ph.D. 


A  Patriarch  Story  143 

God  is  always  represented  as  directly  active,  so 
that,  as  has  already  been  said,  they  may  almost  be 
called  the  history  of  God  rather  than  of  men.  In 
the  second  part  of  the  book,  although  His  presence 
is  all-pervading,  it  is,  so  to  speak,  veiled.  He 
speaks  in  dreams  or  He  is  not  immediately  rec- 
ognized, and  the  true  heroes  of  the  stories  are 
the  men  they  tell  about.  But  they  are  men  of 
national  importance,  and  this  is  characteristic  of 
legend  and  especially  of  saga. 

The  important  feature  of  legend  is  that,  being 
the  product  not  of  any  one  mind  but  of  the  ideas 
of  a  whole  people,  it  is  expressive  of  the  people's 
mind.  Every  ancient  people  had  its  legends  of 
the  founders  of  the  nation,  as  every  child  knows 
who  has  studied  ancient  history.  Those  were 
usually  kept  current  among  the  people  by  wan- 
dering story-tellers,  or  bards,  such  as  existed  in 
Scotland  and  Ireland  until  very  recent  times. 
Evidently  there  was  such  a  class  of  story-tellers 
in  Israel.  The  book  of  Numbers  alludes  to  the 
Moshelim,  reciters  of  sarcastic  verses  ("  they  that 
speak  in  proverbs,"  Numbers  xxi.  27),  and  they 
were  evidently  members  of  the  story-telling 
profession. 

There  are  many  incidents  in  these  patriarch 
stories,  each  one  complete  in  itself,  which  may  be 
told  to  the  younger  children  ;  but  as  a  whole  the 


144  Telling  Bible  Stories 

best  time  for  introducing  a  child  to  this  group  of 
stories  is  the  period  between  eight  and  ten  years 
of  age,  —  the  time  when  he  begins  to  enjoy  hero 
tales, —  to  which  class  these  stories  in  part  belong. 
If  any  parts  of  these  stories  are  told  earlier,  — 
and  such  incidents  as  the  visit  of  the  three  men  to 
Abraham's  tent,  Jacob's  dream,  or  the  selling  of 
Joseph  into  Egypt  may  properly  be  told  to  much 
younger  children,  —  care  should  be  taken  not  to 
read  into  them  anything  which  they  do  not  con- 
tain. They  should  be  told  as  nearly  as  possible 
in  the  Bible  words,  trusting  to  the  child's  imagi- 
nation to  fill  out  the  picture.  The  child's  imagi- 
nation may  err,  but  it  is  far  more  likely  to  be 
true  than  our  own.  At  any  rate,  whatever  we 
may  put  in  to  fill  out  the  framework,  it  must  be 
nothing  that  will  require  paring  down  or  explain- 
ing away  when  the  time  of  proper  appreciation 
arrives.  Rather,  let  the  stories  be  told  as  the 
earlier  stories  were  told,  with  strong  appeal  to 
the  child's  constructive  imagination  to  complete 
the  picture  and  interpret  the  truths  they  embody 
and  are  meant  to  teach. 

For  these  patriarch  stories,  widely  as  they  differ 
in  character  from  the  early  stories  of  Genesis, 
have  this  in  common  with  them,  that  their  main 
purpose  is  not  to  narrate  facts  but  to  make  an 
impression.  This  is  the  purpose  of  every  story- 


A  Patriarch  Story  145 

teller,  whether  he  be  inspired  or  not  inspired,  and 
therefore,  in  all  story- telling,  questions  of  fact 
fall  into  the  background  and  questions  of  method 
take  precedence.  The  method  of  the  writer l  of 
these  stories  is  conditioned  by  his  purpose  ;  each 
story  has  its  own  motive,  and  while  in  general  the 
scope  of  these  legendary  stories  is  by  no  means  as 
large  as  that  of  the  earlier,  mythical  stories,  and 
is  motived  not  only  by  the  truths  implied,  but  also 
by  the  desire  to  embody  in  permanent  form  the 
floating  legends  about  the  founders  of  the  Hebrew 
nation,  yet  the  writer's  general  purpose,  in  select- 
ing precisely  these  incidents  from  the  enormous 
mass  of  story  and  legend  which  must  have  clus- 
tered round  the  names  of  the  patriarchs,  was  none 
other  than  the  purpose  to  impress  upon  Israel 
what  has  been  called  "  the  basic  principle  of  both 
Old  and  New  Testaments  :  the  perfect  God  wish- 
ing to  bring  man  to  holiness  and  true  communion 
with  Himself."  The  accuracy  of  this  description 
is  striking ;  it  should  always  be  the  underlying 
consciousness  of  the  mother  who  tells  these  stories 
to  her  children. 

Each  of  these  stories  has  a  special  purpose  of 

1  The  question  of  the  various  narratives  which  go  to  make 
up  the  book  of  Genesis,  J,  E,  JE,  R,  has  no  place  here. 
Some  one  put  the  stories  into  their  present  form,  and  that  is 
all  that  here  concerns  us. 


146  Telling  Bible  Stories 

its  own,  and  it  is  this  special  purpose,  apart  from 
their  high  literary  value,  which  makes  them  su- 
premely important  from  the  point  of  view,  not 
only  of  religion,  but  also  of  the  development  of 
human  thought,  and  therefore  of  the  mind  of 
the  child. 


Ill 


Now  it  is  a  marvellous  thing  that  the  essential 
purpose  of  the  story  of  Abraham  is  to  reveal  that 
deep  truth  which  is  just  now  especially  occupying 
the  thoughtful  mind,  —  the  great  cosmic  fact  of 
unity.  The  one  God,  the  one  nation  in  whom 
all  families  of  the  earth  were  to  be  blessed,  these 
were  the  prominent  thoughts  in  the  writer's  mind. 
The  peoples  of  the  time  in  which  he  wrote  were 
polytheistic  ;  they  worshipped  a  multitude  of 
gods,  and  the  inveterate  tendency  of  Israel  to  fall 
into  their  ways  is  abundantly  shown  in  the  books  of 
Kings  and  of  many  of  the  prophets.  The  peoples 
among  whom  they  lived,  far  from  recognizing  the 
unity  of  humanity,  were  perpetually  at  war  with 
one  another,  making  conquest  indeed  their  busi- 
ness. All  the  energies  of  the  writer's  mind  were 
devoted  to  showing  that  Israel's  entire  history 
must  be  interpreted  by  the  fact  that  its  founder, 
Abraham,  worshipped  the  one  God  who  was  the 


A  Patriarch  Story  147 

of  heaven  and  earth,  the  Father  of  men, 
the  centre  therefore  of  cosmic  unity  and  of  the 
essential  unity  of  humanity,  and  that  it  was 
through  the  one  nation  which  knew  and  wor- 
shipped this  God  that  all  the  nations  of  the  earth 
were  to  be  blessed.  In  those  days,  when  the  pos- 
session of  wer/th,  either  in  cattle  or  slaves,  was  a 
sufficient  reason  why  those  more  powerful  should 
make  war  upon  the  wealthy  clan  and  rob  it  of  its 
property,  it  was  a  strikingly  significant  illustra- 
tion of  the  function  of  Israel  in  the  world,  that 
Abraham,  with  his  large  band  of  retainers  and  his 
great  wealth.,  lived  out  a  long  life  of  peace  in  the 
midst  of  contmually  warring  peoples,  on  that  very 
soil  of  Canaan  which  from  the  dawn  of  history  to 
the  conquests  of  Napoleon  has  been  the  battle-field 
of  the  world. 

The  form  in  which  the  writer  clothes  these 
truths  of  unity,  cosmic  and  human,  is  to  the  last 
degree  idyllic,  and  though  there  is  hardly  a  word 
of  scenic  description  in  the  whole  story,  the  all- 
pervading  nature  consciousness  is  as  striking  as 
in  any  idyl  of  Theocritus.  The  reader  of  these 
chapters  seems  always  to  be  aware  of  hills  and 
plains,  of  the  starry  expanse  of  heaven  and  the  far- 
off  ocean  roar ;  and  when  the  time  comes  to  intro- 
duce the  children  to  the  geography  of  Palestine, 
they  should  be  shown  what  long  vistas  between 


148  Telling  Bible  Stories 

hills,  and  what  beauty  of  surrounding  scenery, 
have  a  part  in  this  story  of  Abraham.  There  is  a 
description  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  (verse  10), 
where  Abraham  and  Lot  survey  the  land,  that  Lot 
may  choose  his  own  portion,  which,  though  the 
revisers  have  not  put  it  into  poetic  form,  is 
in  fact  a  little  poem,  a  nature  song  such  as  one 
finds  in  Canticles  and  Proverbs,  or  in  the  classic 
writers.  The  story  contains  an  unparalleled  num- 
ber of  manifestations  of  God,  no  fewer  than  nine 
in  all,  and  in  nearly  every  one  there  is  a  surprising 
sense  of  surrounding  nature.  Abraham  is  sitting 
in  his  tent  door  in  the  heat  of  the  day,  looking  off 
upon  the  wide  plains  of  Mamre  ;  he  is  standing 
before  the  Lord  on  the  hill  east  of  Hebron,  look- 
ing down  the  long  vista  between  the  hills  to  the 
far-off  Jordan  Valley  and  the  cities  of  the  plain  ; 
he  is  building  an  altar  beneath  the  far-famed 
soothsayer's  oak  in  the  place  of  Sichem  ;  God  has 
led  him  to  some  commanding  summit,  that  he  may 
look  northward  and  southward  and  eastward  and 
westward,  over  the  hills  and  valleys  of  the  land 
he  shall  inherit,  washed  on  its  border  by  the 
illimitable  sea  ;  or  he  "  brings  him  forth  abroad," 
to  look  toward  heaven  and  count  the  stars,  by 
them  to  learn  the  innumerable  multitude  of  his 
descendants.  The  eighteenth  chapter,  when  the 
three  angels  come  to  Abraham's  tent  and  he  pre- 


A  Patriarch  Story  149 

pares  a  meal  for  them,  is  pure  pastoral,  and  pre- 
cisely such  a  scene  is  often  witnessed  to  this  day 
by  travellers  among  the  nomadic  tribes  of  the 
East.  It  is  good  and  most  elevating  to  bring 
home  to  the  children  this  lovely  nature  feeling, 
just  as  it  is  good  and  most  refining  to  train  them 
to  the  enjoyment  of  fine  scenery,  and  to  the  dis- 
cernment of  the  varied  beauties  of  nature,  even 
where  it  offers  no  particularly  grand  or  picturesque 
features. 

There  is  much  in  Abraham's  story  which  is 
likely  to  slip  out  of  the  narrative  unless  the 
mother  prepares  herself  for  telling  it  by  some 
pretty  thoughtful  reading,  filling  out  the  outlines 
not  only  by  imagination,  but  by  knowledge  gained 
from  other  sources.  For  example,  even  the  de- 
parture of  Abraham  with  his  father  and  his 
nephew  and  his  wife  Sarah  from  the  great  capital, 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  will  start  the  little  child's 
imagination  to  work  when  he  learns  —  as  the 
enormous  mass  of  legend  teaches  —  that  this  was 
an  influential  family  in  that  country  ;  that  they 
might  have  lived  there  as  princes,  if  they  had  been 
willing  to  worship  idols  as  the  other  people  of  the 
city  did ;  and  that  they  gave  up  all  their  property 
and  their  pleasant  home  to  go  away  where  they 
might  be  good  and  worship  the  true  God.  The 
long  night  journeyings  under  the  starry  sky,  the 


150  Telling  Bible  Stories 

days  being  too  hot  for  travelling,  strike  the  idyl* 
lie  keynote  at  once  ;  the  building  of  altars  and 
calling  upon  God  at  every  halting-place  strikes 
the  religious  note  in  such  wise  as  will  awaken 
response  in  even  the  youngest  child,  and  the  death 
of  the  old  father  in  Haran,  while  yet  they  were  far 
away  from  the  promised  land,  will  give  the  touch 
of  personal  sympathy.  For  the  older  children  is 
the  story  of  the  sensation  that  must  have  been 
created,  when,  after  long,  prosperous  years  of  so- 
journ in  Haran,  and  the  far  journey  with  flocks 
and  herds  and  bondservants  ("  the  souls  they  had 
gotten  in  Haran  "),  the  great  caravan  of  travellers 
arrived  in  Canaan.  The  older  children  may  be 
sent  to  histories  and  encyclopaedias  for  information 
of  the  civilization  of  the  Canaanites  in  that  time, 
living  in  cities  surrounded  by  comforts  and  con- 
stantly engaged  in  war,  enriching  themselves  at 
the  expense  of  their  neighbors,  yet  entering  into 
friendly  relations  with  Abraham,  letting  him  wan- 
der freely  through  the  whole  country,  and  never 
making  raids  upon  his  flocks  and  herds,  although, 
especially  after  his  return  from  Egypt  with  great 
added  wealth,  they  must  have  offered  a  very  real 
temptation. 

The  Egyptian  episode 1  contains  nothing  which 
may  not  be  told  a  little  child,  in  the  simple  way 
i  Gen.  xii.  10-xiii.  1. 


A  Patriarch  Xtory  151 

in  which  it  is  told  in  the  Bible  ;  and  it  has  a 
personal  interest  because  it  was  in  Egypt  that 
Sarah  found  her  maid  Hagar,  and  brought  her 
back  with  her  to  Canaan.  The  sheep  and  oxen 
and  bondservants  and  asses  with  which  the  Pha- 
raoh enriched  Abraham  will  serve  to  make  the 
older  children  realize  the  respect  and  honor  which 
Abraham  seemed  able  everywhere  to  command. 
For  these  older  children,  rather  than  the  little 
ones,  except  in  briefest  outline,  is  the  quarrel 
between  the  herdmen  of  Abraham  and  those  of 
his  nephew  Lot,  with  its  opportunities  for  de- 
veloping the  character  of  pastoral  life;  and  the 
generosity  of  Abraham  in  giving  Lot  the  choice 
of  the  land,  with  all  the  consequences  which 
ensued,  is  an  admirable  story  feature.  Here 
should  come  a  study  of  the  physical  geography 
of  the  country.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  al- 
most indispensable  value  to  the  mother  of  Profes- 
sor George  Adam  Smith's  "  Historical  Geography 
of  the  Holy  Land,"  as  a  help  in  preparing  herself 
to  tell  the  Bible  stories,  and  also  for  enlarging 
the  ideas  and  making  concrete  the  interest  of  the 
older  children.  To  this  she  should  add,  as  an  in- 
valuable item  of  nursery  furniture,  a  good  relief 
map  of  the  Bible  lands,  or  at  least  of  Palestine. 
Even  the  younger  children  will  enjoy  it,  and  to 
the  older  ones  it  will  prove  a  great  enlighten 


152  Telling  Bible  Stories 

ment.1  Children  of  ten  and  twelve  will  follow 
upon  the  relief  map  with  unfailing  delight  the 
journey  ings  of  Abraham  and  his  family,  the  wan- 
derings of  Hagar  and  Ishmael,  and  will  discern 
the  wide  panoramas  extended  before  the  view  of 
Abraham  from  his  lofty  home  in  Hebron,2  and  the 
higher  hilltops  to  which  Jehovah  led  him.  And 
during  this  process  many  of  the  deeper  meanings 
of  the  story  will  unfold  themselves. 

The  great  war  narrated  in  the  fourteenth  chap- 
ter, in  which  Lot  was  taken  captive,  and  Abraham 
with  his  retainers  by  a  forced  march  and  a  sudden 
assault  released  the  captives,  is  a  thrilling  tale, 
even  for  the  younger  children,  and  still  more  so 
for  those  of  the  history-studying  age.  But  for 
the  older  boys  and  girls  who  are  going  more  seri- 
ously into  the  story  of  the  ancient  world,  and  are 
taking  up  the  study  of  literature,  this  chapter  is  a 
mine  of  unexpected  suggestion.  The  difference 
of  its  style  from  all  that  precedes  and  follows  is 
very  striking.  It  is  evidently  a  passage  from  a 
very  ancient,  perhaps  contemporary  work,  prob- 
ably a  history  of  Western  Asia,  taken  from  its 
context  by  our  writer  because  it  contains  the 
name  of  Abraham.  Scholars  are  by  no  means 

1 1  may  mention  here,  also,  the  excellent  maps  in  a  Bibla 
Geography,  lately  published. 

8  More  than  three  thousand  feet  above  the  sea  level. 


A  Patriarch  Story  153 

through  with  their  attempts  to  define  precisely 
the  character  of  this  document.  Many  of  the 
names  were  evidently  unknown  to  the  writer  who 
incorporated  it  in  the  Genesis  story,  and  it  appears 
evident  that  he  made  some  attempt  to  modernize 
them  in  order  to  make  them  intelligible.  Neither 
history  nor  legend,  apart  from  this  chapter,  tells 
us  anything  about  precisely  such  an  alliance  and 
such  a  rebellion  as  this  chapter  narrates,  in  which 
the  capture  of  the  non-combatant  Lot  was  only  an 
incident;  but  it  is  now  certain  that  two  of  the 
peoples  here  probably  named  were  at  this  period 
subject  to  Elam,  and  the  names  of  these  persons 
and  places  have  been  found  on  bricks  unearthed  in 
ancient  Babylonia  and  brought  to  the  British  Mu- 
seum. At  least  one  of  the  persons  here  named, 
Chedorlaomer  (more  correctly,  Kudur-Lagomer), 
called  on  these  bricks  "  the  father  of  Palestine,"  is 
well  known  to  history.  The  fresh  additions  to 
our  knowledge  of  that  ancient  time,  continually 
being  brought  to  light  by  archaeological  research, 
are  making  increasingly  probable  some  such  an 
occurrence  as  is  here  narrated.  There  are  matters 
of  detail  here  that  can  hardly  be  possible.  How 
could  even  the  most  able  company  of  three  hun- 
dred and  eighteen  retainers  unpractised  in  war, 
however  well  trained,  and  even  with  the  aid  of 
their  gallant  Amorite  confederates,  rescue  from  a 


154  Telling  Bible  Stories 

great  victorious  army  not  only  the  persons  but  the 
goods  of  a  captured  family  ?  But  the  improbabil- 
ity of  the  details  as  here  narrated  does  not  in  the 
least  affect  the  interest,  or  indeed  the  truth,  of  the 
story.  The  art  of  writing  history  was  only  in  its 
infancy ;  even  the  gifted  father  of  history,  Herodo- 
tus, tells  many  and  many  an  incident  that  will 
not  bear  close  investigation,  and  the  arguments 
between  historians  of  to-day  about  events  as 
recent  as  our  Civil  War,  the  contest  which  has 
recently  arisen  over  the  question  whether  or  not 
Joan  of  Arc  was  actually  burned  at  the  stake, 
show  the  futility  of  asking  for  absolute  accuracy 
in  a  document  almost  four  thousand  years  old. 
The  presence  of  that  document  here  is  invaluable, 
not  only  because  it  has  thus  been  preserved 
through  so  many  millenniums,  but  as  a  striking 
evidence  of  the  literary  methods  of  the  writer  of 
Genesis.  Moreover,  it  is  very  obvious,  from  the 
change  in  literary  style,  that  in  narrating  the  inci- 
dent of  the  rescue  of  Lot,  the  writer  abandons  the 
document  and  falls  back  upon  the  legends  which 
are  in  general  his  sources  of  knowledge.  No 
doubt  in  the  document  there  was  the  merest 
casual  mention  of  Abraham,  but  the  incident  is 
one  with  which  legend  would  be  sure  to  busy  it- 
self. One  of  its  most  interesting  features  is  the 
picture  it  gives  of  Abraham's  relations  with  the 


A  Patriarch  Story  155 

Amorite  princes,  and  of  his  remarkably  high- 
minded  attitude  with  regard  to  the  spoil.  For 
countless  generations  spoil  was  considered  as  the 
legitimate  property  of  the  spoiler  —  were  there 
not  American  officers  who  brought  home  "  loot " 
from  China,  only  a  few  years  ago?  How  digni- 
fied, how  highly  ethical,  how  far  in  advance  of  his 
time,  was  Abraham  in  this  transaction  !  And  how 
eminently  ethical  was  he  in  refraining  from  any 
attempt  to  drag  his  confederates  up  to  his  stand- 
ard !  The  Amorites  who  went  with  him  had  not 
attained  to  his  ethical  heights.  Moreover,  the 
quarrel  was  not  theirs,  and  they  deserved  to  reap 
some  fruits  of  their  friendly  alliance.  That  the 
conquered  people  must  pay  the  expenses  of  war  is 
an  acknowledged  principle  of  international  ethics 
to-day. 

The  Melchizedek  incident l  comes  in  here.  It 
is  difficult  to  find  the  historical  or  the  religious 
place  among  the  Canaanites  of  this  priest-king 
who  served  the  "  most  high  God."  But  the 
writer's  motive  for  including  this  legend  here 
is  very  evident,  and  very  amazing.  In  the  very 
midst  of  a  story  designed  to  show  that  Israel  was 
God's  chosen  people,  and  chosen  for  the  special 
purpose  of  being  the  unifying  bond  of  humanity, 
he  introduces  an  incident  to  show  that  Israel  had 
i  Gen.  xiv.  17-24. 


156  Telling  Bible  Stories 

not  the  exclusive  privilege  of  knowing  the  true 
God ;  that  all  men  had  the  same  right ;  that  God 
is  no  respecter  of  persons ;  and,  as  St.  Peter  learned 
with  such  difficulty  two  thousand  years  later,  that 
in  every  nation  he  that  feareth  God  and  worketh 
righteousness  is  accepted  of  him.1 


IV 

All  this  for  the  older  children,  the  high  school 
or  college  boys  and  girls.  For  children  of  every 
age  is  the  lovely  story  of  the  visit  of  the  three 
angels,  one  of  whom  proves  to  be  Jehovah  Him- 
self, and  the  promise  of  the  longed-for  son ;  fol- 
lowed by  that  wonderful  walk  of  Abraham  with 
the  Lord,  when  God  made  him  His  confidant, 
telling  him  what  He  was  going  to  do.  Here  is  the 
place  for  the  relief  map,  and  the  children  may 
trace  that  ravine  between  the  hills  by  which,  from 
the  high  hill-top,  Abraham  saw  Sodom  in  the  far 
valley,  while  he  made  his  importunate  prayer  for 
its  salvation.2  The  intercessory  prayer  and  the 
destruction  of  Sodom  will  be  lightly  touched  upon 
until  the  children  are  growing  up;  for  though 
young  children  can  know  their  right  to  pray  for 
others,  they  can  neither  understand — cannot  even 
think  about  —  the  nature  of  intercessory  prayer 
i  Acte  x.  34.  2  Gen.  xviii.  23-33. 


A  Patriarch  Story  157 

or  the  moral  condition  of  a  city  in  which  not  ten 
righteous  men  can  be  found ;  while  the  brave  ap- 
peal of  Abraham  to  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  to 
"  do  right "  is  a  subject  for  the  most  profoundly 
thinking  mind.  But  at  fifteen  or  sixteen  they  can 
understand  that  it  was  what  Abraham  had  done 
for  Sodom,  the  battle  and  the  rescue  (for  we  are 
not  to  think  that  Lot  alone  was  either  taken  pris- 
oner or  rescued),  which  lent  warmth  to  his  inter- 
est and  urgency  to  his  prayer,  and  they  can  learn 
from  it  the  religious  truth  that  it  is  in  fact  only 
those  for  whom  we  are  willing  to  suffer,  for  whom 
we  have  any  right  to  pray. 

Every  child's  heart  will  thrill  with  response  to 
the  joy  over  the  birth  of  Isaac,1  and  will  be  deeply 
moved  by  the  pathos  of  the  banishment  of  Hagar 
and  Ishmael.2  As  I  have  already  indicated,  there 
is  something  in  the  latter  story  for  the  older  chil- 
dren. Only  those  who  are  well  grown  can  enter 
into  the  full  significance  for  the  whole  world  of 
the  birth  of  the  son  of  promise. 

No  event  in  the  life  of  Abraham  so  appeals  to 
a  little  child  as  that  which  is  commonly,  and  with 
deeper  truth  than  appears  on  the  surface,  called 
the  sacrifice  of  Isaac.3  He  can  understand  none 
of  its  far-reaching  implications,  but  to  its  deeply 
religious  spirit  he  will  beautifully  respond.  The 
i  Gen.  xxi.  1-8.  2  Ib.  vss.  9-21.  •  Gen.  xxii.  1-19. 


158  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

greatest  care  should  be  exercised  to  give  him  no 
erroneous  impression;  but  no  mother  will  make 
the  mistake  of  discussing  with  a  child  the  ethical 
question  —  which  in  fact  is  not  an  ethical  ques- 
tion, but  purely  historical  and  literary  —  which 
this  story  involves.  The  time  for  that  comes 
later,  and  to  it  we  shall  later  return. 

The  dignified  and  pathetic  account  of  the  death 
and  burial  of  Sarah l  has  also  its  interest  for  the 
child  who  is  old  enough  to  know  about  death,  and 
it  contains  much  that  may  be  later  developed,  as 
to  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  time  and  the 
relations  of  Abraham  with  the  Canaanitish  neigh- 
bors among  whom  he  had  lived  so  long  as  a  friend. 
Each  of  the  incidents  in  Abraham's  life  is  a  story 
by  itself,  and  may  be  told  by  itself,  independently 
of  any  other. 

Somewhat  later  than  the  period  for  studying 
mythology,  though  still  while  the  children  enjoy 
their  Grimm  and  Hans  Andersen,  and  when  they 
have  come  to  explore  the  inexhaustible  riches  of  the 
"  Arabian  Nights,"  2  comes  the  time  for  introducing 

1  Gen.  xxiii. 

2  I  have  elsewhere  emphasized  the  immense  importance  of 
the  "Arabian  Nights"  to  Western  Bible  students,  for  the  point 
of  view  and  the  Eastern  atmosphere  they  give.      Lane's  three 
illustrated  volumes  should  be  in  every  nursery.     There  are 
later  renderings  of  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  (Lang's,  for  instance) 
perhaps  more  easy  for  the  children  to  read,  and  charming  as 


A  Patriarch  Story  159 

them  to  the  wealth  of  legendary  lore  which  has 
clustered  around  the  name  of  Abraham.  The 
mother  will  find  much  of  it  in  any  good  Biblical 
encyclopaedia,  and  especially  in  the  Jewish  En- 
cyclopaedia, which  is  in  every  public  library. 
These  legends  bear  witness  to  the  fact  that  the 
religious  influence  of  the  Hebrew  people  upon  the 
world  life  that  surrounded  them  was  greater  than 
is  commonly  recognized,  and  this  should  be  care- 
fully pointed  out  as  the  older  children  review  the 
story.  Tacitus  and  Strabo  mention  it,  and  the 
great  number  of  "  God-fearing  "  pagans  in 
the  New  Testament  story,  the  "proselytes  of  the 
gate,"  in  Jewish  parlance,  bears  incidental  wit- 
ness to  this  influence.  Indeed,  it  was  the  im- 
mense number  of  these  proselytes  at  the  time 
of  our  Lord's  advent,  found  in  every  walk  of 
life  from  the  imperial  family  to  the  common 
soldiery,  which  explains  from  the  human  point 
of  view  the  phenomenal  success  of  the  apostolic 
preaching.  This  the  historic  and  classical  studies 
of  the  college  boys  and  girls  will  show.  But  the 
younger  school  children  have  here  to  do  simply 

specimens  of  modern  literature,  but  they  are  far  from  useful 
either  as  to  text  or  illustrations  for  the  purpose  now  in  mind. 
Lane's  illustrations  and  his  notes  are  a  liberal  education  in 
Eastern  lore  and  an  accurate  representation  of  the  Eastern 
spirit  even  of  to-day. 


160  Telling  Bible  Stories 

with  the  legends  that  cluster  around  the  name 
of  Abraham,  beginning  with  his  life  in  Chaldsea. 
They  tell  that  he  was  a  teacher  of  improved  agri- 
culture, that  he  invented  the  alphabet,  that  the 
angels  of  God  taught  him  Hebrew,  not  spoken  in 
Chaldsea.  They  say  that  he  was  banished  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees  for  having  strenuously 
preached  against  idolatry ;  —  and  indeed  it  is  not 
amiss  to  find  in  a  sentence  of  banishment  God's 
summons  to  Terah  to  depart  from  ChaldaBa  and 
go  to  the  promised  land.  Legend  says  that 
Abraham  was  at  Babel,  and  remonstrated  against 
the  building  of  the  tower,  and  that  Nimrod,  king 
of  Babylon  (as  well  as  the  authorities  of  Ur), 
persecuted  him  for  his  zeal  in  preaching  and  de- 
stroying idols,  and  that  he  miraculously  escaped 
death.  Another  legend,  embroidering  upon  the 
material  after  the  manner  of  legend,  says  that  he 
led  a  horde  of  insurrectionists  out  of  Babylon  into 
the  desert.  Arab  literature  represents  him  now 
as  a  great  man  of  the  East,  a  magus,  well  read  in 
the  stars,  and  again  as  a  conquering  prince  sweep- 
ing all  before  him.  Yet  his  title  in  the  East  was 
usually  "  The  Friend  " ;  with  all  his  zeal  for  true 
religion  he  was  never  regarded  as  claiming  au- 
thority, and  as  "  The  Friend  "  he  is  known  to  this 
day  in  local  tradition,  as  we  shall  presently  see. 
The  Jewish  book  of  Jubilees  numbers  ten  trials 


A  Patriarch  Story  161 

of  his  faith,  that  of  Isaac's  sacrifice  being  theii 
culmination. 


The  next  step  of  progress  in  the  "  graded 
system  "  of  telling  the  story  of  Abraham's  life  is 
to  take  the  relief  map,  already  familiar  to  the 
children,  and  go  carefully  over  his  long  journey- 
ings,  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees  to  Egypt,  or  at 
least  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Palestine. 
The  places  should  be  identified  where  Abraham 
built  his  altars  and  took  possession  of  the  land  for 
Jehovah,  making  it  the  Holy  Land  which  it  has 
been  from  that  day  to  this.  The  fine  geographical 
position  of  Shechem,  in  the  high  valley  between 
Mounts  Ebal  and  Gerizim,  should  be  noticed.  It 
is  at  the  parting  place  of  the  waters  from  which  the 
streams  flow  away  on  one  side  to  the  Jordan 
Valley,  on  the  other  to  that  great  and  wide  sea 
which  always  made  such  a  strong  impression 
upon  the  Hebrew  mind.  The  marvellous  coloring 
of  the  Holy  Land  might  here  be  mentioned,  and 
if  the  mother  has  some  of  the  colored  photograv- 
ures of  the  country  now  so  easily  obtainable,  they 
will  help  to  make  this  geographical  study  more 
vivid,  —  the  intense  brilliancy  of  the  flowers 
spreading  everywhere  like  a  Turkish  carpet,  the 


162  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

vivid  chocolate  of  the  clay  banks,  the  deep  green 
of  the  grain  fields  and  grass,  the  brilliant  blue  of 
the  overarching  sky,  bending  down  on  the  western 
horizon  to  meet  the  deeper  blue  of  the  wide  sea 
where  go  the  ships. 

Near  by  is  the  plain  of  Moreh,  under  the  shade 
of  whose  venerable  landmark,  the  "soothsayer's 
oak,"  Abraham  built  his  first  altar,  and  so  im- 
pressed the  warlike  princes  of  Canaan  that  they 
made  that  alliance  of  friendship  with  him  that 
lasted  all  the  long  years  of  his  life.  Thence  the 
children  may  trace  the  way  of  the  valleys  by  which 
Abraham  and  his  retainers  came  to  Bethel,  and 
again  built  an  altar.  There,  after  his  return  from 
Egypt,  Abraham  pitched  his  tent  and  made  his 
first  permanent  home  in  Canaan.  It  was  from  the 
top  of  the  hill  east  of  Bethel  that  Abraham  and 
Lot  viewed  that  far  prospect  of  the  "  circle  of  the 
Jordan  "  which  seemed  to  Lot  so  fair  ;  and  this  is 
the  time  to  identify  the  "  vale  of  Siddim,"  where 
the  four  kings  did  battle  with  five. 

From  Bethel  they  may  trace  the  ancient  high- 
way which  led  in  Abraham's  time,  and  leads  still, 
southward  to  lofty  Hebron,  surrounded  with  fruit- 
ful valleys,  where  Abraham  spent  much  of  his  life, 
and  where,  on  the  brow  of  the  hill  Beni-Nami, 
that  rises  above  it  to  the  eastward,  he  stood  before 
the  Lord  and  prayed  for  Sodom.  Southward  that 


A  Patriarch  Story  163 

ancient  road  leads  over  great  desert  ridges  to 
Beersheba,  a  vantage  point  for  graziers  and  for  trav- 
ellers from  that  day  to  this.  It  was  beside  the 
wells  of  Beersheba  that  Abraham  made  a  covenant 
with  the  desert  chieftain  Abimelech,  king  of  Gerar, 
a  Bedouin  chief  like  those  of  to-day,  and  as  likely 
as  they  to  harass  and  plunder  him,  but  for  that 
gift  of  friendship  which  Abraham  possessed  in 
so  rare  a  degree.  Southward  from  Beersheba 
the  "  dry  and  parched  land  "  of  "  the  South,"  the 
Negeb,  spreads  out  to  the  border  of  Egypt  :  the 
Negeb  where  Hagar  wandered  and  where  genera- 
tions later  David  roamed  with  his  brave  outlaw 
band,  and  where  to  this  day  the  Bedouin  descend- 
ants of  Ishmael  are  the  dread  of  travellers. 

It  was  in  Hebron  that  Abraham  mostly  lived. 
Its  very  name  to-day,  El  Khalil,  "The  Friend," 
perpetuates  his  memory,  not  only  because  he  "  was 
called  the  friend  of  God,"  but  also,  we  may  believe, 
for  that  marvellous  power  of  friendship  which 
through  a  long  life  kept  him  at  peace  with  the 
Canaanites  among  whom  he  dwelt.  It  was  in  the 
plains  of  Mamre,  near  Hebron,  now  marked  by 
the  ruins  of  a  great  building  of  huge  stones,  that 
Abraham  was  dwelling  when  the  three  heavenly 
visitants  claimed  his  hospitality. 

One  site  can  be  only  traditionally  identified,  — 
the  land  of  Moriah  where,  in  the  father's  bleeding 


164  Telling  Bible  Stories 

heart,  Isaac  was  as  truly  offered  to  God  as  if  his 
blood  had  actually  been  shed  upon  the  altar. 
Traditionally,  it  was  the  mount  on  which  the 
temple  was  afterward  built.  The  site  was  already 
occupied  with  a  city,  Salem,  where  dwelt  the 
Canaanitish  priest  king,  Melchizedek  ;  and  it  is 
conceivable  that  the  words,  the  place,  in  the 
story,  which  have  a  very  definite  significance  as 
of  the  usual  place,  indicate  a  shrine  sacred  in 
the  usage  of  the  people  of  the  city.  This,  however, 
is  hardly  probable,  and  the  more  that  explorers 
learn  of  the  early  history  of  Jerusalem,  the  more 
improbable  it  appears  that  this  could  have  been 
the  site.  Another  tradition  points  to  Mount 
Gerizim,  near  Shechem,  where  Abraham  built  his 
first  altar,  and  this  seems  more  probable.  The 
children  may  retrace  the  journey  of  the  sad-hearted 
father  and  of  the  wondering  son,  who  is  making 
his  first  journey  from  home,  along  the  old  highway 
from  Beersheba  to  Hebron,  and  thence  to  Bethel, 
and  so  up  the  height  beyond  where  the  streams 
part  on  their  several  ways  to  Jordan  and  the  sea, 
to  the  summit  of  the  hill  that  was  afterward  to  be 
the  mount  of  blessing.1 

1  Deut.  xxTii.  12. 


A  Patriarch  Story  165 


VI 


The  children  must  have  come  to  thoughtful 
years  before  they  can  profitably  consider,  except 
most  incidentally,  the  ethical  feature  of  Abra- 
ham's story,  and  then  the  question  of  the  sacrifice 
of  Isaac  will  probably  be  the  most  insistent.  I 
have  already  said  that  this  problem  is  rather  his- 
torical and  literary  than  ethical.  It  will  be  neces- 
sary to  take  into  consideration  the  religious  ideas 
of  the  time,  and  the  character  of  Abraham's  re- 
ligious experience.  In  Chaldyea  he  had  certainly 
been  familiar  with  the  practice  of  the  sacrifice  of 
the  first-born  son,  The  religion  of  Canaan — not- 
withstanding the  legendary  presence  of  the  priest 
king,  Melchizedek  —  was  much  more  debased 
than  that  of  Chaldaea,  yet  apparently  did  not 
include  this  practice,  or  Isaac  would  surely  have 
suspected  his  father's  purpose  from  the  absence  of 
a  lamb  for  the  sacrifice.  It  is  quite  thinkable,  if 
the  admission  be  not  imperative,  that  long  years 
of  lonely  service  of  the  invisible  God  may  have 
confused  Abraham's  ideas,  though  without  shak- 
ing his  heroic  faith.  We  do  not  ourselves  admit 
that  God  could  have  tempted  Abraham,  though 
we  have  already  seen  that  the  ethical  sense  of  this 
writer  would  not  forbid  him  to  think  so.  But 


166  Telling  Bible  Stories 

the  instinct  lying  at  the  root  of  this  legend  is  a 
true  and  a  most  religious  instinct.  Abraham  rec- 
ognized that  Isaac  belonged  to  God  more  than  to 
his  father.  It  is  psychologically  entirely  possible 
that  he  felt  an  imperative  need  of  proving  to 
himself  that  he  held  this  greatly  longed-for  son  in 
subordination  to  the  will  and  service  of  God.  In 
Abraham's  heart  and  purpose  Isaac  was  as  truly 
offered  to  God  as  though  the  hand  had  not  been 
stayed  that  held  the  knife  ;  and  this  is  the  pro- 
foundly moral  and  religious  significance  of  the 
story.  And  we  may  observe  that  it  tells  against, 
not  for,  the  practice  of  human  sacrifice.  We  have 
only  to  point  young  people  to  the  later  history  of 
Israel,  when  this  strange  temptation  took  posses- 
sion of  them  simultaneously  with  an  appalling 
lowering  of  their  moral  standards,  to  recognize 
the  profound  ethical  protest  of  this  story,  and  the 
abundant  justification  of  its  presence  here. 

There  are  other  moral  issues,  simpler  in  char- 
acter, in  which  Abraham  undoubtedly  failed. 
His  treatment  of  Hagar  can  only  be  condoned  by 
the  customs  of  the  time  and  the  domestic  compli- 
cations arising  from  Sarah's  not  unnatural  jeal- 
ousy. His  duplicity  in  Egypt  is  a  grave  fault 
from  his  own  standpoint  of  faith  in  God.  Yet 
again  we  must  remember  the  necessary  part  of 
the  moral  ideas  of  the  time  in  which  the  legend 


A  Patriarch  Story  167 

was  forming  which  makes  the  basis  of  this  story. 
Evidently  the  writer  sees  no  harm  in  Abraham's 
duplicity,  and  the  fact  simply  shows  that  the 
enlightened  conscience  of  800  B.C.  was  far  less  en- 
lightened than  the  Christian  conscience  of  1900  A.D. 
Could  it  be  otherwise  ?  The  religious  signifi- 
cance of  the  entire  Abraham  story  is  very  pro- 
found. God  was  the  regulating  principle  of  his 
life,  and  this  it  was  which  made  him  great.  In  his 
deliberate  choice  of  a  wandering  life,  when  he 
might  have  passed  a  life  of  ease  and  honor  in 
Chaldsea,  he  was  a  type  of  Him  who  for  our  sakes 
became  poor.  We  think  of  Abraham's  life  as  a 
heroic  life,  but  surely  in  his  own  day  it  was  not 
accounted  so.  He  had  not  even  the  distinction  of 
being  the  sole  man  who  knew  the  true  God,  for 
we  have  seen  that  this  is  the  significance  of  the 
Melchizedek  incident.  His  faith  was  almost  in- 
conceivable, even  now,  and  it  never  shone  brighter 
than  when,  in  the  face  of  apparent  impossibility, 
he  uttered  the  words  of  triumphant  conviction, 
"  My  son,  God  will  provide  himself  a  lamb."  His 
preeminence  among  men  was  due  to  the  faith  that 
made  him  the  friend  of  God,  and  by  it  he  was 
exalted  and  made  strong  in  the  conviction  that 
it  was  his  destiny  to  be  made  a  blessing  to  all 
the  families  of  the  earth.  His  communion  with 
God  was  well-nigh  unparalleled.  In  his  long 


168  Telling  Bible  Stories 

journeyings  under  the  night  sky  of  Chaldsea  he 
had  learned  to  talk  with  him  as  with  a  friend, 
and  the  many  subsequent  appearances  of  God  to 
him  are  as  psychologically  explicable  as  the 
visions  of  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel,  and  of  John  in 
Patmos.  They  are  not  to  be  reckoned  among 
the  miracle  stories  of  the  Bible ;  they  are  in  per- 
fect harmony  with  the  whole  course  of  Abraham's 
life,  which  was  one  of  almost  uninterrupted  com- 
munion with  God. 

The  self-exile  of  Abraham  from  Chaldaea  was 
the  beginning  of  missions.  He  was  a  forerunner 
of  Duff  and  Carey  and  Livingstone,  yes,  and  of 
Franklin  and  Nansen  and  Peary,  seeking  to  give 
the  unknown  world  a  share  in  their  own  blessings. 
To  the  life  history  of  mankind  it  has  even  larger 
significance.  It  is  analogous  to  the  expulsion  of 
Adam  from  Eden,  of  Cain  from  the  parental  home, 
and  to  the  isolation  of  Noah  by  the  flood  ;  it  was 
a  new  chance  for  mankind.  Knowing  God  as 
Abraham  did,  he  saw  that  there  was  a  great  future 
for  man.  He  saw  himself  and  his  race  not  as  sin- 
gled out  from  other  men  for  special  favors,  but  as 
types  of  all  mankind,  and  partakers  in  a  special 
mission  of  blessing.  His  migration  was  the  begin- 
ning of  an  ideal  holy  nation,  of  the  kingdom  of 
God. 


CHAPTER   VI 

OTHER  PATRIARCH  STORIES 

Genesis  xxi.  1-8 ;  xxii.  1-19 ;  xxiv. ;  xxvi.  12-33 


IT  is  not  necessary  to  consider  in  detail  the 
graded  method  of  telling  the  stories  of  Isaac, 
Jacob,  and  Joseph.  These  stories  are  told  with 
wonderful  simplicity,  and  as  they  stand  in  the 
Bible  they  unfold  themselves  to  children  of  dif- 
ferent ages.  A  few  words  may  be  said  as  to  the 
significance  of  each.  The  purpose  of  the  story  of 
Isaac  is  other  than  that  of  Abraham.  It  must  be 
evident,  even  to  a  superficial  reader,  —  and  chil- 
dren are  not  superficial  readers,  —  that  Isaac  is  not 
formed  on  as  grandly  heroic  lines  as  Abraham, 
although  he  is  certainly  not  the  pale  reflection  of 
his  father  and  his  son  that  many  writers  affirm 
him  to  be.  His  part  in  the  sacrifice  story  is 
always  overshadowed  by  that  of  Abraham ;  yet 
surely  Isaac's  consent  to  be  a  sacrifice  not  only  re- 
quired no  little  heroism,  but  also  an  acute  religious 
consciousness.  And  that  he  did  consent  is  cer- 


170  Telling  Bible  Stories 

tain,  since  otherwise  he  could  hardly  have  been 
laid  upon  the  altar.  His  self-immolation  was  as 
perfect  and  as  heroic  as  that  of  Iphigenia  of  which 
children  who  study  mythology  will  be  reminded, 
or  of  the  ancient  Phoenician  story,  of  which  the 
boys  and  girls  in  the  literature  classes  may  have 
heard.  That  the  event  was  different  in  Isaac's 
case  and  in  theirs  does  not  affect  the  analogy. 
The  story  is  highly  typical.  Isaac  represents 
humanity,  devoted  to  death  yet  not  slain,  redeemed 
by  a  power  outside  of  himself.  Greek  and  Phoeni- 
cian myth  clearly  show  that  the  universal  con- 
science is  awake  to  this  condition  of  humanity. 
That  it  can  find  no  outcome  except  the  death  of 
the  victim  marks  the  contrast  between  the  com- 
mon operations  of  the  human  mind  and  the  Isaac 
story. 

The  outcome  of  Isaac's  voluntary  yielding  of 
himself  to  death  affected  the  character  of  all  his 
subsequent  life,  and  the  key  of  his  life  story,  as  of 
the  purpose  of  the  writer,  is  found  in  the  marginal 
reading  of  the  verse  which  completes  the  narrative, 
—  Jehovah-jireh,  Jehovah  will  provide.  The 
teaching  of  a  perpetual  guiding  providence  is  the 
teaching  of  the  life  of  Isaac,  a  new  idea  as  it  is 
here  taught,  showing  providence  to  be  not  that 
special  interposition  of  a  divine  being,  of  which 
epic  poetry  is  so  fond,  but  the  sanctification  of 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  171 

daily  life  by  the  continued  overshadowing  of  God's 
protecting  care.  Henceforth  this  idea  of  provi- 
dence runs  through  all  the  Bible  story. 

The  loves  of  the  heroes  are  an  integral  part  of 
the  epics  of  the  ancients,  and  in  this  respect,  too, 
the  Isaac  narrative  resembles  them.  The  larger 
part  of  his  story  is  devoted  to  that  most  exquisite 
of  idyls,  the  courtship  of  Rebekah,  well-nigh  un- 
paralleled in  all  literature.  Oriental  it  is,  indeed ; 
the  lover  hardly  appears  at  all ;  and  by  this  fact 
it  is  so  much  the  more  true.  It  will  be  an  en- 
chanting exercise  for  the  children  who  study 
geography  to  trace  the  path  of  the  trusted  slave 
Eliezer  as  he  leads  his  caravan,  laden  with  gifts 
for  the  unknown  bride,  from  southern  Beersheba, 
where  Isaac  mainly  lived,  over  mountain  ridge 
and  fruitful  plain,  by  lakeside  and  riverside  and 
across  the  desert  to  far-off  Haran,  where  Isaac's 
grandfather  Terah  had  died.  The  close  of  the 
journey  is  an  exquisite  picture.  The  group  of 
camels  kneeling  by  the  well,  the  man  bent  forward 
in  the  Eastern  attitude  of  prayer,  the  girl  coming 
over  the  rolling  upland  with  her  pitcher  on  her 
shoulder  —  it  is  the  poetry  of  all  the  ages,  yet  true 
to  daily  life  as  we  find  it  to-day  in  any  Eastern 
village.  And  the  idyllic  beauty  of  the  picture  is 
penetrated  through  and  through  with  that  master 
thought,  Jehovah-jireh,  the  constant  providence 


172  Telling  Bible  Stories 

of  God,  guiding  the  very  footsteps  of  the  servant, 
and  bringing  to  his  side,  with  no  effort  of  his 
own,  his  master's  destined  bride.  How  true  it 
is  to  the  epics  of  every  people,  with  their  constant 
interposition  of  the  gods  in  the  affairs  of  men ; 
how  sublimely  lifted  above  them  with  its  nobler 
apprehension  of  the  meaning  of  divine  guidance! 
What  a  lesson  at  once  in  literature  and  in  religion 
for  the  older  children  ! 

These  older  children  were  introduced  to  the 
composite  character  of  the  book  of  Genesis  in  the 
story  of  the  flood.  A  more  advanced  lesson 
offers  itself  in  three  episodes  in  the  lives  of 
Abraham  and  Isaac :  the  Egyptian  episode  of 
Chapter  xii,  that  of  Abraham  and  Abimelech  at 
Gerar  in  Chapter  xx,  and  that  of  Isaac  and  Abime- 
lech in  Chapter  xxvi.  I  submit  that  no  young 
person  who  has  been  taught  to  know  the  Bible 
as  the  children  here  contemplated  have  been 
taught,  whose  minds  have  been  biassed  by  no  pre- 
conceived notion  of  what  the  Bible  must  be  or 
what  inspiration  must  be,  but  who  have  learned 
by  their  own  knowledge  of  the  Bible  stories  that 
inspiration  is  what  the  Bible  t«,  —  no  such  young 
person,  I  insist,  can  read  these  three  incidents 
without  instinctively  perceiving  that  they  are 
varying  legendary  accounts  of  the  same  event. 
Granting  that  there  may  have  been  two  Abime- 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  173 

lechs,  father  and  son,  in  friendly  alliance  with 
the  Hebrew  father  and  son,  granting  that  no 
conjecture  is  incredible  by  which  a  distinction 
may  be  established  between  these  stories  :  the 
inconceivable  fact  remains,  that  Abraham  should 
have  twice  made*  the  same  inept  and  useless  blun- 
der, or  that  Isaac  should  by  accident  have  stum- 
bled upon  the  identical  futility.  The  presence 
here  of  three  varying  accounts  of  the  same  event 
offers  no  difficulty  to  those  who  have  the  literary 
standpoint  of  these  children.  These  are  simply 
varying  legends  which  have  grown  up  from  some 
one  incident,  piously  preserved  by  the  writer  of 
the  book,  either  because  he  mistakingly  deemed 
them  all  narratives  of  fact,  or  because,  according 
to  his  custom,  he  was  not  concerned  about  fact, 
but  deemed  their  use  to  be  peculiarly  well  adapted 
to  meet  some  ethical  need  of  the  people  for  whom 
he  wrote.  He  was  not  in  the  least  concerned, 
and  neither  are  our  children,  to  discover  whether 
the  nucleus  of  the  legend  should  be  traced  to 
Abraham  or  to  Isaac.  The  critics  alone  are  con- 
cerned with  this  question,  and  they  properly,  for 
it  has  large  implications. 


174  Telling  Bible   Stories 


II 

Genesis  xxvii.— xxxv.,  xlvi.  1—7,  28—34;  xlvii. 
7-10,  27-xlviii.  22 ;  xlix.  1,  22—1.  14 

The  story  of  Jacob  belongs  unmistakably  in 
that  class  with  which  the  children  who  are  study- 
ing Latin  or  Greek  or  English  literature  have 
learned  to  know  as  epic.  There  are  many  epical 
features  in  the  stories  of  Abraham  and  Isaac,  but 
that  of  Jacob  is  all  epic.  It  is,  however,  far  more 
like  the  Greek  epic  than  any  other.  Jacob  has 
been  called  the  Hebrew  Ulysses  because  of  his 
far  wanderings,  and  the  analogies  are  sufficiently 
close  to  reveal  themselves  to  the  boy  or  girl  who 
looks  for  them,  though  in  religious  quality  they 
are  as  far  apart  as  heaven  from  earth.  The  story 
of  Jacob  embodies  the  truth  of  an  overwatching 
Providence  which  emerged  in  that  of  Isaac,  but 
it  carries  the  idea  a  long  step  farther.  From  the 
time  when  Jacob  leaves  his  father's  house  to  pass 
through  that  experience  of  separation  which,  since 
Adam  and  Eve  left  Eden,  has  been  shown  to  be 
necessary  for  the  development  of  higher  character, 
to  the  death-bed  scene  in  Egypt  where  he  blesses 
his  twelve  sons,  every  line  reveals  the  marvellous 
truth  of  personal  communion  between  man  and 
God.  Every  incident  speaks  of  God's  personal 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  175 

care  of  Jacob  :  the  ladder  set  up  beside  his  stony 
pillow,  reaching  from  heaven  to  earth,  the  angelic 
band  sent  to  guard  him  when  he  was  to  meet  his 
brother  Esau,  the  mysterious  person  who  wrestled 
with  him  through  the  long  night  before  that  meet- 
ing. Even  down  to  old  age  this  protecting  care 
overshadowed  him,  and  when,  after  years  of  mourn- 
ing, the  son  whom  he  had  lost  sent  for  him  to 
share  the  ease  and  plenty  of  Egypt,  God  spake 
to  him  in  the  visions  of  the  night,  promising  to 
go  with  him  to  that  unknown  land.  The  epical 
touch  in  this  last  promise  may  well  be  pointed 
out,  "Joseph  shall  lay  his  hand  upon  thine 
eyes  "  —  should  close  his  father's  eyes  in  death. 
Homer  and  Virgil  often  have  this ;  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  considering  the  closing  of  dead  eyes 
as  the  last  act  of  affection. 

This  new  sense  of  the  presence  of  God  in  daily 
life  is  the  meaning  of  the  whole  story:  of  Jacob's 
intriguing  with  his  mother  to  secure  his  father's 
blessing,  his  far  wandering  to  the  ancient  seat  of 
his  father's  house,  his  communing  with  heaven 
and  angels  in  a  dream  under  the  overarching  sky, 
his  beautiful  love  story,  his  rapidly  growing  pros- 
perity, his  flight  from  Padan-Aram  with  his  flocks 
and  herds  and  children,  his  fears  of  his  brother 
Esau,  his  conflict  with  God.  Such  conflicts  are 
very  frequent  in  epic  story.  The  high  school 


176  Telling  Bible  Stories 

children  know  that  Homer's  gods  are  continu- 
ally fighting  with  men.  But  the  contrast  between 
those  conflicts  and  that  of  Jacob  needs  not  to  be 
pointed  out ;  it  pervades  the  whole  story.  That 
mysterious  struggle  shows  not  so  much  Jacob's 
courage  as  his  power  of  faith,  but  most  emphati- 
cally of  all  God's  willingness  to  bless.  Jacob  be- 
came God's  warrior  —  Israel —  not  by  wresting  the 
blessing  from  God,  but  by  at  last  submitting  and 
being  willing  to  receive  it.  It  is  in  the  very  spirit 
of  epic  that  Jacob  is  made  a  man  of  superhuman 
strength  —  able  by  himself  to  roll  away  the  stone 
from  the  well  mouth,  without  waiting  for  the 
assembled  band  of  shepherds,  as  well  as  to  endure 
the  night-long  wrestling  with  the  angel. 

The  unloveliness  of  Jacob's  character  is  usually 
emphasized ;  it  has  become  rather  the  fashion  to 
point  to  Esau's  virtues,  such  as  they  were,  by  way 
of  contrast.  Let  us  not  make  this  mistake  with 
the  children.  Esau  was  sensual  and  selfish  ;  his 
noble  traits  were  mainly  those  of  a  noble  animal. 
There  is  nothing  grand  in  holding  cheap  a  future 
good  as  compared  with  immediate  gratification. 
Truly  did  the  apostolic  writer  call  him  "  profane," 
for  to  "  despise  "  the  birthright  that  carried  with 
it  the  privilege  of  service  is  essential  irreligion. 
Jacob  was  a  man  of  ideals  which  he  sought  to 
realize  by  methods  not  ideally  good,  just  as  many 


Other  Patriarch  Storie*  177 

men  of  ideals  do  to-day.  The  unloveliness  of 
Jacob's  youthful  character  was  largely  redeemed 
by  a  controlling  purpose  which  it  is  a  mistake  to 
call  selfish.  The  desire  for  the  birthright  was  a 
noble  desire,  for  the  birthright  carried  with  it  no 
added  property  nor  preeminence,  except  in  that 
highest  honor,  the  opportunity  for  service.  It 
involved  the  priesthood  of  the  family,  and  that 
same  function  of  blessing  others  which  Abraham 
so  coveted  as  to  forsake  home  and  father's  house 
to  gain  it.  The  noblest  feature  in  Jacob's  char- 
acter was  his  intense  power  of  loving,  leading 
him,  as  this  Godlike  gift  always  should,  but  does 
not  always,  to  heroic  and  long-sustained  self- 
restraint.  This  gift  of  loving  is  evident  not  only 
in  the  story  of  his  courtship,  but  in  many  other 
incidents  of  his  life,  and  is,  indeed,  in  a  large 
sense,  its  explanation. 

Although  the  children  have  but  lately  followed 
upon  the  relief  map  the  journey  of  Eliezer  to 
Haran,  that  of  Jacob  over  the  same  ground  will 
still  afford  interest ;  while  the  return  journey, 
which  does  not  cover  the  same  ground,  has  many 
points  of  interest.  They  will  also  wish  to  trace 
his  later  journey  to  Egypt,  in  the  wagons  which 
his  son  sent  for  him  and  his,  and  his  silent  return, 
travelling  sumptuously  now,  with  a  long  train  of 
mourners,  to  be  buried  with  his  fathers  in  Mach- 


178  Telling  Bible  Stories 

pelah.  The  four  hundred  miles  that  lay  between 
Beersheba  and  Haran  must  have  stretched  out 
interminably  before  the  young  Jacob  as  he  set 
forth,  not  like  Eliezer,  travelling  with  camels  and 
laden  with  gifts,  but  alone  and  on  foot,  his  sole 
possession  his  father's  blessing,  that  "  blessing  of 
Abraham "  which  meant  so  much  to  him.  The 
night  halt  at  Bethel  affords  opportunity  for  a 
little  bit  of  topography.  Though  Bethel  was  a 
town,  Jacob  did  not  enter  it,  but  sought  for  "  the 
place  "  of  the  altar  his  forefather  had  erected,  near 
the  huge  ladderlike  rocks  which,  cutting  off  the 
horizon,  may  well  have  been  the  material  sugges- 
tion of  his  dream.  It  is  a  reminder  of  the  local 
ideas  of  God  which,  as  has  already  been  pointed 
out,  for  generations  seemed  to  be  instinctive,  that 
after  seeing  in  his  dream  the  invisible  bridge  that 
connects  God  and  man,  the  ladder  down  which 
angels  came  to  him,  Jacob  should  utter  an  excla- 
mation of  surprise  at  finding  Jehovah  there,  whom 
he  thought  he  had  left  behind  at  his  father's 
house.  It  will  be  well  to  send  the  children  to  an 
encyclopedia  to  look  up  the  custom  of  anointing  a 
pillar  in  token  of  God's  presence.  The  custom 
still  prevails  in  some  parts  of  the  East,  and  such 
monumental  stones  as  those  at  Stonehenge  in 
England  and  Carnac  in  Brittany  show  that  it  was 
a  world- wide  custom,  and  responded  to  a  real  spir- 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  179 

itual  impulse  —  the  same  which  makes  us  not  only 
dedicate  cathedrals  but  "  christen  "  ships  and  for- 
mally set  apart  public  buildings. 

It  was  the  first  victory  over  a  grasping  nature, 
which  he  did  not  conquer  for  many  a  year,  when 
Jacob  promised  to  give  a  tenth  of  his  property  to 
God,  not  by  way  of  bargaining  with  him,  as  has  too 
often  been  said,  but  as  a  spontaneous  expression  of 
gratitude  and  also  of  faith.  At  that  moment  the 
future  was  very  dark.  Esau  had  threatened  to 
kill  him  whenever  he  might  return,  and  in  such 
things  Esau  was  a  man  of  his  word.  But  Jacob 
fully  expected  that  God  would  be  with  him  and 
that  he  would  come  again  to  his  father's  house  in 
peace.  And  he  was  right. 


Ill 

Genesis  xxxvii,  xxxix-xlv,  xlviii.  13-26 ;  1. 15-26 

The  story  of  Joseph  is  beloved  by  children  of 
every  age.  It  ends  well,  and  that  is  highly  satis- 
factory. It  makes  especial  appeal  to  persons  of 
immature  spiritual  experience,  because  it  vindi- 
cates the  ways  of  God  with  men.  On  the  surface, 
in  its  intensely  human  character  and  extreme 
naturalness,  it  seems  more  purely  a  child's  story 
than  any  other,  yet  in  its  profound  implications 


180  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

it  is  almost  more  than  any  other  adapted  to  the 
developing  religious  experience  of  the  boy  and 
girl  in  their  teens.  There  are  very  dark  shadows, 
but  they  only  enhance  the  brightness  of  the  pic- 
ture. Through  much  tribulation  Joseph  wins 
his  way  to  triumphant  success,  and  it  becomes 
evident  that  his  vice-regal  splendor  is  due  to  the 
discipline  of  the  dry  cistern  and  the  dungeon 
cell. 

Joseph  comes  very  near  to  the  children,  he  is 
such  a  human  boy.  A  little  bit  of  a  prig,  as 
other  good  boys  are  apt  to  be  when  once  they 
have  earned  their  reputation,  a  dreamer  without 
any  more  judgment  than  other  dreamers  about 
keeping  his  dreams  to  himself,  quite  appreciating 
himself  as  such  boys  do,  indulged  and  a  little 
spoiled  by  his  father,  telling  tales  on  his  older 
brothers,  and  so  exasperating  them  that  they 
"  could  not  say  4  Peace ' "  —  the  usual  salutation 
—  when  they  met  him.  The  children  will  not  be 
surprised  that  his  brothers  did  not  care  to  have 
him  with  them.  They  don't  like  that  sort  of 
boy  very  much,  although  they  recognize  his 
goodness.  They  quite  appreciate  the  feelings 
of  the  brothers  when  they  saw  him  coming 
across  the  plain  wearing  his  "  coat  such  as  princes 
wear,"  the  sign  that  his  father  meant  him  to  in- 
herit the  birthright  and  take  his  place  at  the 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  181 

head  of  the  family  as  the  oldest  son.  The  atro- 
cious act  which  follows,  however,  quickly  dispels 
their  sympathy. 

It  is  needless  to  point  out  how  charming  the 
very  youngest  children  will  find  this  story  when 
briefly  and  somewhat  dramatically  told.  To 
those  of  eight  or  nine  it  may  be  read  straight 
through,  like  any  other  story,  with  a  few  brief 
omissions  or  paraphrases,  and  little  or  no  explana- 
tion ;  it  will  explain  itself.  For  children  next  in 
age  it  has  a  literary  value  quite  beyond  any  nar- 
rative that  has  preceded  it,  and  a  moral  value 
much  more  closely  adapted  to  their  years.  For 
it  is  an  exquisite  and  very  noble  piece  of  litera- 
ture, highly  dramatic  in  its  vivid  presentation, 
and  superb  in  diction,  especially  in  the  oratorical 
passages.  The  address  of  Judah  should  form  an 
important  part  of  the  repertory  of  the  boy  who 
has  come  to  the  time  of  "speaking  pieces"  in 
school,  and  it  will  thrill  him  through  and  through 
with  its  noble  eloquence.  A  year  or  two  later, 
when  the  children  are  reading  the  "Arabian 
Nights,"  the  analogies  of  those  stories  will  be 
very  helpful.  They  will  be  familiar  then  with 
the  practice  of  putting  inconvenient  persons  into 
a  pit  or  dry  cistern,  and  they  will  perfectly  well 
understand  its  conformation,  —  narrow  at  the  top 
and  greatly  widening  beneath,  to  form  the  scene 


182  Telling  Bible  Stories 

of  many  episodes  in  Eastern  story.  They  are 
also  well  acquainted  with  that  august  court  offi- 
cial, the  Grand  Wezeer,  and  can  quite  picture 
Joseph's  functions  when  placed  "  over  the  house  " 
of  the  Pharaoh.  They  are  also  quite  at  home  in 
such  sudden  reversals  of  fortune  as  Joseph's  ele- 
vation from  the  prison  cell  to  that  exalted  post. 

Familiarity  thus  gained  with  the  setting  and 
atmosphere  of  the  narrative,  it  will  be  easy  a  year 
or  two  later  to  review  it  in  considerable  detail, 
the  relief  map  now  taking  its  part  in  the  story. 
It  begins  at  Hebron,  because  Jacob  had  lately 
come  from  his  home  in  Bethel  (or  perhaps  in 
Shechem,  for  he  lived  at  times  in  either  place)  to 
attend  the  death-bed  of  his  father  Isaac,  and  with 
Esau  to  bury  him  in  the  cave  of  Machpelah,  which 
Abraham  had  bought  for  a  family  burying-ground 
when  Sarah  died.  It  was  in  the  journey  thither, 
near  Ramah,  that  Joseph's  beautiful  mother 
Rachel  died,  leaving  him  with  the  baby  brother 
Benjamin,  whom  he  always  so  tenderly  loved. 
Joseph's  dreams  show  that  his  father  was  a  farmer, 
as  well  as  a  shepherd  and  grazier,  for  one  of  them 
was  of  binding  sheaves  in  a  field. 

The  children  will  trace  Joseph's  long  walk 
from  "the  vale  of  Hebron"  to  Shechem  and  to 
Dothan,  where  his  brethren  were  feeding  their 
flocks.  And  they  may  trace  that  ancient  and 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  183 

most  historic  of  highways  by  which  the  Midian- 
ites  came  with  their  caravans  on  their  way  from 
Gilead  to  Egypt.  For  centuries  armies  had 
marched  over  that  road,  armies  of  Egypt  and 
Assyria,  of  Hittite  and  Canaan  ite  ;  for  centuries 
caravans  had  borne  between  these  countries  the 
myrrh  and  spicery  of  Gilead,  and  the  linen 
and  embroideries  of  Egypt,  of  which  Ezekiel 
speaks.  That  ancient  highway  is  still  traversed 
to-day  by  tradesmen  and  travellers,  as  it  winds 
along  the  green  pastures  of  Gilead,  crosses  the 
fords  of  the  Jordan  below  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  trav- 
erses the  fruitful  plain  of  Jezreel,  and  so  over 
the  foot-hills  to  the  sea,  where  it  follows  its  mar- 
gin to  Egypt.  Let  the  children  find  the  land  of 
Goshen,  too.  It  is  no  longer  a  puzzling  task, 
since  its  locality  was  discovered  twenty  years  ago, 
after  having  been  unknown  for  centuries.  It  is 
a  peculiarly  fruitful  country,  and  a  railroad  now 
crosses  the  fields  where  the  sons  of  Jacob  fed 
their  flocks.  Then  let  them  trace  "the  river," 
which  in  telling  this  story  the  mother  should 
always  call  the  Nile,  since  it  is  so  in  the  origi- 
nal, and  to  the  children  who  study  geography  it 
makes  the  meaning  more  real. 

The  cold-blooded  heartlessness  of  the  brothers 
in  sitting  down  to  eat  after  casting  Joseph  into 
the  pit  is  a  part  of  the  story  which  awakens  the 


184  Telling  Bible  Stories 

sympathies  of  every  child.  Long  years  after, 
"  the  anguish  of  Joseph's  soul  when  he  besought 
us  and  we  would  not  hear,"  returned  to  torment 
the  brothers  when  they  found  themselves  detained 
"  in  ward  "  in  Egypt,  on  an  accusation  which  they 
could  not  understand  and  which,  in  true  oriental 
fashion,  no  one  undertook  to  justify.  The  chil- 
dren will  deem  their  distress  no  more  than  they 
deserved ;  they  will  understand  that  there  was  no 
revenge  in  Joseph's  heart  when  he  thus  tested 
them.  The  whole  story  shows  how  it  wrung  his 
soul  to  "speak  roughly  unto  them"  and  accuse 
them  of  being  spies.  Joseph  knew  by  this  time 
that  God  had  a  purpose  in  his  affliction,  although 
the  sorrows  of  the  past  years  must  still  have  been 
very  vivid  in  his  memory.  The  psalmist  no  doubt 
preserved  a  true  tradition,  when  centuries  later  he 
wrote,  in  a  passage  which  should  be  pointed  out 
to  the  young  people  who  are  studying  literature  :  — 

He  sent  before  them  a  man, 
Sold  for  a  slave  was  Joseph, 
They  afflicted  with  fetters  his  feet, 
The  iron  entered  into  his  soul. 
(Ps.  civ.  17, 18.    The  translation  is  Edersheim's.) 

IV 

When  the  children  are  studying  ancient  history 
there  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  possible  develop- 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  185 

ment  of  the  story.  Who  were  the  Hyksos  kings, 
and  why,  though  every  shepherd,  being  dirty, 
bearded,  and  unshaven,  "  was  an  abomination  "  to 
the  scrupulously  clean  and  beardless  Egyptians, 
the  king  was  yet  glad  to  welcome  this  clan  of 
hardy  Asiatics  and  settle  them  upon  the  frontier 
of  his  country;  the  high  civilization  of  Egypt, 
suggested  by  the  necessity  for  careful  dress  before 
entering  the  king's  presence,  the  functions  of  the 
magicians  and  the  wise  men,  whose  ritual  has 
lately  been  discovered;  the  brilliant  learning  of 
Heliopolis,  into  whose  highest  circle  Joseph  mar- 
ried —  the  Oxford,  the  Athens  of  Egypt,  On,  "  City 
of  the  Sun,"  "  Source  of  the  Springs  of  the  Sun"; 
the  symbolism  of  Pharaoh's  dream  —  the  sacred 
river,  the  literal  fountain  of  life  to  Egypt,  and  the 
cow,  symbol  of  Isis;  the  illustrations  which  the 
monuments  afford  of  many  details  mentioned  in 
the  story  —  storing  grain,  noting  the  contents  of 
granaries,  embalming,  funerals,  and  mourning,  — 
all  these  things,  readily  accessible  in  any  library, 
will  fill  out  the  story  to  the  imagination  of  the 
grammar  school  children. 

At  a  still  later  period  they  may  be  set  to  find 
the  explanation  of  some  things  that  they  have 
already  observed,  indicating  the  presence  of  two 
narratives  in  this  story:  the  part  of  Reuben  and 
the  Midianites,  and  of  Judah  and  the  Ishmaelites 


186  Telling  Bible  Stories 

in  the  selling  or  stealing  of  Joseph.  (Joseph  him- 
self tells  Pharaoh  that  he  was  stolen,  and  Reuben 
evidently  thinks  so,  though  in  making  himself 
known  to  his  brethren  Joseph  says  he  is  "  Joseph, 
whom  ye  sold  into  Egypt.")  It  will  be  interesting 
for  them  to  trace  the  consistency  of  each  narrative 
through  the  story,  and  it  will  afford  a  glimpse 
into  the  literary  methods  of  the  author  of  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  artistic  tales  in  literature. 
That  it  is  a  tale  and  not  a  history  is  evident :  how 
could  ten  corn  sacks  carry  food  for  all  Jacob's 
clan,  especially  when  ten  animals  and  as  many 
men  were  fed  from  them  during  the  journey?  As 
a  story  this  is  perfectly  right ;  these  animals  and 
sacks  stand  for  the  large  caravan  which,  histori- 
cally, must  have  gone  to  Egypt  after  food,  but 
which  would  have  encumbered  the  tale  to  the 
point  not  only  of  missing  the  dramatic  effect,  but 
of  obscuring  the  religious  meaning.  This  the 
young  people  who  have  been  trained  in  the  study 
of  literature  will  readily  perceive. 

They  will  perceive,  too,  the  profoundly  religious 
character  of  the  story.  Joseph  is  the  conspicuous 
illustration  of  brotherhood,  as  the  other  patriarchs 
of  fatherhood.  Not  only  his  affection  for  the  little 
motherless  brother  who  was  especially  his  own, 
but  also  his  true  spirit  of  brotherhood  for  all  the 
others,  pervades  the  whole  story.  In  him, 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  187 

the  religious  experiences  of  his  father  and  grand- 
fathers bore  their  legitimate  fruit ;  temptation 
brought  out  in  him  a  moral  greatness  and  strength 
of  piety  unsurpassed  if  equalled  by  any  of  them. 
He  was  indeed  an  epitome  of  all  their  virtues,  a 
singularly  well-rounded  character.  The  Pharaoh 
recognized  that  he  was  a  man  in  whom  dwelt  the 
spirit  of  God.  The  tragic  elements  of  his  life 
never  for  an  hour  overpowered  him,  but  simply 
gave  him  that  quality  which  Matthew  Arnold 
called  distinction,  and  which  may  almost  always 
be  observed  in  persons  of  superior  piety,  however 
humble  their  station. 

One  moral  fact,  traceable  from  the  beginning 
of  the  book  of  Genesis,  shines  out  conspicuous  in 
the  story  of  Joseph,  —  the  part  that  separation  had 
to  play  in  the  development  of  these  men  of  old. 
Adam,  Enoch,  Noah,  Abraham,  Jacob,  Joseph  — 
all  except  Isaac  were  called  to  this  discipline, 
and  Jacob  indeed  twice,  since  his  migration  to 
Egypt  was  a  separation  from  the  land  of 
promiseo  From  the  day  of  that  migration,  for 
generations  the  sons  of  Israel  were  separated 
from  the  promised  land.  As  the  German  De- 
litzsch  has  finely  said,  the  twelve  sons  of  Jacob 
were  the  seed  corn  of  Israel,  transplanted  in 
Egypt  for  fuller  development.  Joseph  was  "  sent 
before"  to  prepare  the  ground  for  that  trans- 


188  Telling  Bible  Stories 

planting,  and  in  that  separation  he,  too,  developed 
his  noblest  traits. 

The  God  consciousness  of  Joseph  was  wonder- 
ful, equalling  and  even  surpassing  that  of  his  father 
Jacob.  Though  he  had  been  thirteen  years  absent 
from  the  influence  of  home,  when  the  summons 
came  from  the  Pharaoh,  he  had  not  lost  his  sense  of 
God's  constant  care.  He  had  been  willing  to  in- 
terpret the  dreams  of  the  butler  and  the  baker,  be- 
cause he  was  still  "true  to  the  dreams  of  his  youth," 
and  still  believed  them  to  have  been  a  message 
from  God,  though  as  yet  so  far  from  being  fulfilled. 
And  when  Pharaoh  referred  to  the  evidence  he  had 
given  of  ability  to  interpret  dreams,  how  quickly 
came  his  answer  :  "  Ah,  not  I  !  Q-od  will  answer 
the  peace  of  Pharaoh."  His  unalterable  confidence 
in  God  gave  ground  for  his  reassurance  of  his 
brothers  :  their  wrong  to  him  had  been  overruled 
by  God  for  good.  Thus  he  had  been  enabled  to 
be  the  nursing  father  of  that  nation  in  whom  all 
peoples  of  the  world  have  been  blessed. 

The  supreme  significance  of  the  story  is  this  : 
that  its  happy  outcome  is  due  not  to  the  fact  that 
Joseph  was  spared  the  discipline  of  sorrow,  like 
Enoch,  or  protected  from  it,  like  Noah,  but  that 
through  its  discipline  sorrow  itself  was  transformed 
into  joy.  Joseph  was  a  man  made  perfect  through 
suffering. 


Other  Patriarch  Stories  189 

Dr.  Matheson  makes  a  beautiful  comparison, 
which  the  children  who  are  musical  will  appre- 
ciate, of  the  life  of  Joseph  with  one  of  Chopin's 
preludes.  Each  has  three  periods.  The  free  and 
unrestrained  melody  of  the  first  corresponds  with 
Joseph's  years  of  freedom.  Then  comes  the  second 
movement,  tangled  and  rent  like  the  middle  period 
of  Joseph's  life.  But  at  last  "  the  melody  comes 
into  the  open  once  more,  the  tangles  vanish,  the 
impediments  are  removed,  and  notes  of  the  first 
part  reappear  in  a  new  connection  and  with  a  fresh 
power." 


CHAPTER  VII 
HERO  TALES 


THE  general  culture  of  the  intelligent  mother 
teaches  her  precisely  where,  in  what  literary  order, 
to  place  the  patriarch  stories  of  the  last  two  chap- 
ters. She  is  no  more  blinded  to  their  character  by 
the  fact  that  they  are  not  clothed  in  poetic  form 
than  she  is  blinded  as  to  Walt  Whitman's  poetry 
or  some  of  Matthew  Arnold's,  because  it  neither 
rhymes  nor  scans.  The  patriarch  stories  belong 
in  the  literary  class  called  epic, —  that  is,  the  class 
which  is  distinguished  from  the  drama  by  narrative 
form  and  from  history  by  creative  treatment. 
History  discusses  facts  without  treating  them 
creatively,  but  the  creative  treatment  of  the 
patriarch  stories  is  their  outstanding  character. 
They  are  based,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  legend,  as 
epic  always  is,  even  such  epic  stories  of  our  later 
writers  as  "  Evangeline  "  and  "  Hiawatha."  They 
appeal,  as  poetry  does  and  history  does  not,  to  the 
emotions  and  the  conscience,  and  they  are  so  told  as 
to  make  peculiar  summons  to  the  imagination,  call- 

190 


Hero  Tales  191 

ing  up  the  scene  as  in  a  picture  before  the  hearer 
or  reader,, 

It  may  be  wise,  just  here,  to  dwell  for  a  moment 
upon  the  important  religious  function  of  poetry. 
Cheyne  has  reminded  us,  and  every  one's  experience 
shows,  that  "  good  as  the  truth  of  history  may  be, 
the  truth  of  poetry  may  for  purposes  of  edification 
be  even  better."  How  many  of  us  get  our  best 
preparation  for  prayer  by  reading  hymns  and  other 
religious  poetry  ?  How  many  of  us  get  our  most 
vivid  apprehensions  of  truth  through  the  medium 
of  poetry? 

The  patriarch  stories,  though  told  in  prose,  have 
the  essential  characteristics  of  precisely  that  kind 
of  poetry  which  we  call  epic.  Their  writer,  like 
other  epic  writers,  does  not  explain  the  significance 
of  what  he  writes.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the 
"  Iliad  "  or  the  "  Odyssey  "  than  the  externality  of 
the  story,  the  utter  absence  of  introspection  and 
meditation,  and  the  same  externality  pervades  all 
these  patriarch  stories,  notwithstanding  their  pro- 
found spiritual  significance.  The  significance  is 
due  to  the  unique  religious  genius  of  the  writer, 
that  is,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  to  his 
divine  inspiration.  It  is  this  which  has  enabled 
him  to  give  to  his  epic  stories  a  unique  religious 
value. 

And  yet  these  stories  are  not  different  from 


192  Telling  Bible  Stories 

other  epic  in  the  mere  fact  that  they  are  religious  i 
they  differ  from  others  simply  by  the  quality  of 
their  religion.  For  epic  is  nothing  other  than  that 
form  of  history  which,  whether  real  or  invented, 
lies  at  the  basis  of  all  religion.  The  study  of  the 
religious  history  of  every  people,  in  whatever  age, 
always  brings  us  back  to  epic,  to  the  "  Iliad," 
"  Kalewala,"  "  Niebelungen,"  "  Zend-Avesta," 
"  Vedas."  The  story  of  Prometheus,  which  some 
of  the  older  children  will  study  in  the  marvellous 
words  of  ^Eschylus,  and  of  which  they  long  ago 
learned  the  outline  in  their  little  mythology  book, 
lies  at  the  very  basis  of  the  Greek  religion.  And 
that  -^Eschylus  tells  the  story  in  dramatic  form, 
and  not  in  the  poetic  form  of  Homer's  stories  in 
the  "  Iliad,"  suggests  that  epic  may  also  be  clothed 
in  prose,  as  in  the  Old  Testament. 

The  Hebrew  epic  is  like  the  epics  of  Greece  and 
Scandinavia,  India  and  Allemania,  in  lying  at  the 
foundation  of  religion:  it  differs  from  them  in 
being  spiritual,  in  pouring  a  spiritual  meaning 
into  the  life  of  man  with  God;  in  its  power  to 
look  forward  as  well  as  back,  and  foresee  in  the 
legends  of  the  past  the  beginnings  of  an  ideal 
holy  nation,  the  kingdom  of  God. 

A  great  Biblical  scholar,  Wellhausen,  has  said 
that  "  even  when  we  do  not  understand  these 
legends,  they  lose  nothing  of  their  charm,  fox 


Hero  Tales  193 

they  breathe  a  sweet  poetic  fragrance,  and  in 
them  heaven  and  earth  are  magically  blended  into 
one."  But  the  mother  may  "understand  these 
legends."  She  may  even  make  her  children 
understand  them,  if  instead  of  regarding  them 
from  the  historic  point  of  view  she  considers  them 
as  epic,  and  studies  them  as  she  would  study  an 
oriental  poem. 

For  it  is  always  to  be  remembered  that  the  Old 
Testament  epic  is  oriental,  and  in  that  respect 
differs  from  the  epics  of  any  European  people. 
Realizing  this  it  will  be  easier  to  perceive  the 
very  important  fact  that  the  forms  of  speech 
which  we  find  in  it  are  not  Biblical,  but  oriental. 
That  is,  they  are  not  sacred  forms  of  utterance, 
reserved  for  sacred  books,  but  the  everyday  mode 
of  expression  in  their  own  time  and  place.  In 
fact,  they  are  not  even  ancient,  like  the  language 
in  which  some  modern  writers  try  to  clothe  their 
historical  novels  ;  they  are  the  everyday  mode  of 
expression  of  the  Shemitic  folk  at  the  present  time. 
Any  missionary  to  Western  Asia  or  any  Egyptian 
explorer  will  tell  us  so.  Sir  Samuel  Baker,  in  his 
book  on  the  "  Tributaries  of  the  Nile,"  shows  that 
the  Arabs  of  the  Soudan  use  Old  Testament  lan- 
guage to-day.  If  there  is  a  famine  or  a  pestilence, 
they  say  that  "  the  Lord  has  sent  a  grievous  fam- 
ine," or  "  a  sore  murrain  upon  the  land."  To  the 


194  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Arab  of  to-day  a  dream  is  the  voice  of  God  as  it 
was  to  Jacob  and  to  St.  Paul,  and  he  still  says  and 
believes,  "I  have  received  commandment  of  the 
Lord  in  a  dream"  to  do  thus  and  so.  All  the 
figures  of  speech  of  those  people  to-day  are  Bibli- 
cal, and  if  an  Arab  were  to  write  a  history  of  the 
present  time,  Baker  says,  it  would  not  only  be 
couched  in  Biblical  language,  but  the  modes  of 
thought  would  be  Biblical.  A  sojourn  among 
these  people  shows  most  strikingly  how  true  the 
Bible  stories  are. 

Now  there  is  no  class  of  literature  which  so  fires 
the  mind  of  the  developing  child  as  epic  does.  An 
intelligent  boy  of  eight  will  be  thrilled  through 
and  through  by  passages  from  the  "  Iliad,"  or  the 
"  Niebelungen  Lied,"  or  Macaulay's  "  Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome,"  which,  though  modern,  and  fall- 
ing far  short  of  the  ancient  epics,  are  still  epic 
poems.  The  experiences  of  the  mother  who  has 
well  told  the  patriarch  stories  shows  that  the 
child  feels  precisely  the  same  sort  of  thrill  when 
he  hears  about  Abraham  and  Isaac,  Jacob  and 
Joseph,  that  those  epic  poems  give  him. 

But  these  are  by  no  means  the  only  epic  stories 
in  the  Old  Testament.  A  large  part  of  the  book 
of  Joshua  is  epic,  and  there  is  one  book  —  that  of 
Judges  —  which  is  just  a  splendid  collection  of 
epic  or  hero  tales,  as  thrilling  as  Homer,  set  by 


Hero  Tales  195 

some  pious  writer  in  a  framework  of  didactic  his- 
tory, corresponding  with  the  framework  of  gene- 
alogy in  which  the  Genesis  stories  are  set.  It  will 
be  a  good  Sunday  afternoon  exercise  for  the  gram- 
mar and  high  school  children,  as  interesting  as  any 
literary  game, — and  why  should  it  not  be  treated 
as  a  game  ?  —  to  divide  the  book  of  Judges  into 
its  original  chapters,  and  discover  the  author's 
religious  purpose  in  the  didactic  history  which 
introduces  most  of  these  chapters.  A  similar 
"  Sunday  game  "  would  be  to  distinguish  the  epic 
story  from  the  other  parts  of  the  book  of  Joshua. 
It  may  be  well  at  this  point  to  explain  to  the  chil- 
dren that  a  better  translation  of  the  word  Judges 
is  Chiefs.  They  will  perfectly  well  recognize  that 
these  old  epic  heroes  were  judges  in  no  sense  of 
the  word. 

n 

Judges  xiii.— xvi. 

An  inquiry  not  long  ago  instituted  among 
Sunday-school  boys  brought  to  light  the  fact  that 
Daniel,  David,  and  Samson  were,  of  all  the  charac- 
ters in  the  Bible,  their  favorite  heroes.  The 
Daniel  story  does  not  belong  among  hero  tales, 
and  the  story  of  David  falls  more  properly  among 
the  romantic  tales  of  the  next  chapter.  David  as 


196  Telling  Bible  Stories 

well  as  Samson,  however,  had  many  characteristics 
of  the  Greek  Herakles,  and  alert-minded  school 
children  will  find  it  interesting  to  trace  the  like- 
ness between  them,  and  to  discern  the  very  great 
differences, — which  are  entirely  religious  and 
moral.  Not  that  either  Samson  or  David  is  to  be 
taken  as  an  example  of  morality.  But  right  here, 
in  telling  the  Samson  story,  the  mother  should 
explain  to  the  children  who  have  come  to  the  age 
for  explanation  that  the  development  of  morality 
and  of  the  conscience  is  a  gradual  process,  going 
on  in  history.  The  older  children  will  have 
learned  enough  of  Greek  history  to  perceive  that 
a  good  conscience  —  which  the  Greeks  valued  as 
much  as  we  do — was  by  no  means  the  same  in 
"  CEdipus,"  for  example,  that  it  is  in  themselves. 
Saul,  who  was  afterward  Paul,  verily  thought 
that  it  was  not  only  right  but  a  duty  to  persecute 
the  disciples  of  Jesus.  Conscience  is  the  voice  of 
God ;  but  as  a  baby  does  not  at  first  even  hear  its 
mother's  voice,  and  for  a  long  time  does  not  under- 
stand what  it  says,  and  learns  its  meaning  only  by 
degrees,  so  it  is  true  that  high  and  sensitive  moral 
standards  are  the  result  of  long  inheritance  and 
training. 

Therefore  though  Samson  cannot  be  in  any  re- 
spect a  moral  example  to  children  of  to-day,  there 
is  much  religious  significance  in  his  story.  How- 


Hero  Tales  197 

ever,  it  is  true,  and  the  children  will  perceive  it 
from  the  beginning,  that  there  is  by  no  means  the 
same  spiritual  significance  in  Judges  that  we  find 
in  Genesis.  This  is  due  to  the  author.  The 
Judges  writer  did  not  work  over  the  old  legends 
as  the  Genesis  writer  did :  he  did  not  saturate 
them  with  religious  meaning:  he  simply  sur- 
rounded them  with  it,  by  his  didactic  framework. 
This  is  an  interesting  point  for  the  children  who 
are  studying  literature,  and  would  make  an  excel- 
lent subject  for  an  essay.  The  little  children  will 
delight  in  nearly  every  incident  of  the  Samson 
story  :  the  visit  of  the  angel  before  his  birth,  his 
victory  over  the  lion,  his  carrying  away  the  heavy 
gates,  his  loss  of  strength  when  his  hair  was  cut ; 
his  self-sacrificing  death  in  the  heathen  temple. 
From  first  to  last  it  is  that  story  of  victorious 
strength  in  which  every  child  heart  delights.  In 
form  the  story  preserves  many  characteristics  of 
folk-lore  almost  unchanged.  The  wheedling  by 
Delilah  is  precisely  as  in  many  an  old  fairy  tale. 
The  popular  tales  of  many  countries  embody  beliefs 
about  hair  that  remind  one  of  Samson.  Mis- 
sionaries to  our  Western  Indians  tell  of  the  diffi- 
culty they  meet  in  inducing  parents  to  let  them 
cut  their  children's  tangled  hair.  They  feel  it 
a  disgrace  that  a  boy's  hair  should  be  cut  before 
he  becomes  a  man,  and  a  woman  with  short  hair 


198  Telling  Bible  Stories 

would  feel  ashamed  indeed.  The  ancients  be- 
lieved that  they  might  deposit  their  soul  in  their 
hair  for  safety  ;  others  with  nearer  analogy  to  the 
Samson  story  thought  that  their  strength  resided 
in  their  hair  and  would  be  lost  if  that  were  cut 
off.  The  somewhat  general  fallacy  of  mothers 
that  children's  strength  "  goes  to  the  hair  "  when 
this  is  particularly  luxuriant,  may  be  a  relic  of 
some  old  legend.  It  may  be  observed  that  the 
meaning  of  Samson's  name,  "  the  sunny  "  suggests 
some  of  the  numerous  sun  myths,  and  there  are 
certain  of  these  which  suggest  the  Samson  story. 
Nevertheless  Samson  is  distinctly  not  a  sun  myth. 

In  absence  of  moral  quality,  Samson  more  nearly 
than  any  other  Biblical  hero  resembles  the  heroes 
of  pagan  epic,  and  as  we  have  seen  he  is  in  many 
respects  especially  like  Herakles.  The  twelve 
labors  of  Herakles  are  nearly  paralleled  by  the 
seven  exploits  of  Samson,  especially  the  slaying 
of  the  lion  and  the  episode  of  the  foxes  and  the 
firebrands,  which  has  many  resemblances  to  the 
killing  of  the  Hydra.  There  was  a  later  custom 
in  Rome  which  was  very  like  the  fox  incident. 
At  the  festival  of  Ceres  a  fox  hunt  was  held  in 
the  circus  in  which  burning  torches  were  tied  to 
the  foxes'  tails.  The  children  may  look  up  in  the 
library  the  origin  of  this  custom. 

Notwithstanding  these  analogies  there  is  a  wide 


Hero  Tales  199 

difference  between  Samson  and  Herakles.  With 
all  his  untutored  spontaneity  Samson  is  never  un- 
couth or  vulgar  as  Herakles  often  is.  He  is  a 
brave  spirit  in  the  midst  of  much  disappointment 
and  trial,  "  a  native  merriness  encircles  him  "  ;  he 
is  fond  of  riddles  and  puns  and  practical  jokes. 
Yet  all  through  his  story  the  older  children  will 
feel  the  influence  of  his  early  training  by  "a 
mother  who  had  talked  with  angels,"  and  will 
recognize  that  that  influence  had  its  bearing  on 
the  tragedy  of  his  life,  which  so  solemnly  fore- 
shadows Him  who  just  because  He  would  save 
others  could  not  save  Himself. 


Ill 

Judges  iv,  v. 

The  story  of  Barak's  victory  is  a  splendid  bit 
of  epic,  which  will  delight  the  younger  children, 
and  abundantly  reward  the  study  of  those  who 
are  older.  The  relief  map  will  show  that  as 
Samson's  story  is  mainly  laid  on  the  smiling 
slopes  of  those  western  foothills  which  are  very 
like  the  braes  of  Scotland,  so  Barak's  adventures 
are  mainly  in  the  far  north.  The  historic  signifi- 
cance of  the  war  with  Sisera  was  great  at  that 
period,  when,  as  the  book  of  Judges  shows,  the 


200  Telling  Bible  Stories 

twelve  tribes  had  as  yet  no  national  feeling,  bu^ 
each  lived  for  itself,  somewhat  like  our  thirteen 
colonies  after  the  Revolution  and  before  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Constitution.  Evidently  the  prophetess 
Deborah,  like  our  Washington,  was  penetrated 
with  the  ideal  of  a  united  people  and  a  united 
Fatherland.  Her  splendid  ode,  worthy  the  study 
of  the  advanced  student  of  literature,  is  gener- 
ally believed  to  be  the  oldest  extant  specimen  of 
Hebrew  poetry  ;  yet  what  noble  lyrical  and  dra- 
matic qualities  it  shows,  —  impetuous  rapidity, 
vivid  suggestions,  picturesque  brevity,  complete- 
ness. There  are  passages  in  it  from  which 
Macaulay  was  not  sorry  to  draw  inspiration  for 
his  "  Horatius "  ;  there  is  a  passage  in  which, 
even  in  English,  we  hear  the  clatter  of  the 
horses'  hoofs,  such  as  the  schoolboy  hears  in  his 
"  quadrupedante,"  and  which  Burke,  Napier, 
Heine,  Scott,  have  not  excelled.  There  is  im- 
mense dramatic  suggestion  in  the  mother  of 
Sisera  looking  from  her  window;  but  it  sug- 
gests most  to  those  who,  as  children,  have  learned 
from  the  "  Arabian  Nights "  the  important  part 
that  looking  out  of  the  lattice  plays  in  the  life 
of  Eastern  women.  The  mother  may  here  direct 
the  children's  attention  to  the  ballad  of  Sir 
Patrick  Spens,  and  to  Logan's  poem,  "  The  Braes 
of  Yarrow,"  in  this  connection.  The  touch  of 


Hero  Tales  201 

oriental  life  in  the  picture  of  the  fugitive  general 
coming  to  the  tent  of  Jael  is  very  graphic,  and, 
notwithstanding  the  doubtful  morality  of  the 
incident,  less  doubtful  when  one  considers  the 
moral  standards  of  the  time  and  place,  there  is 
no  hero  tale  in  the  Old  Testament  that  more 
vividly  presents  the  truth  that  the  people  Israel 
felt  —  that  their  individual  lives  and  their  national 
life  had  their  integral  part  in  the  plan  of  God. 


IV 

Exodus  xvii.  8—13 ;  Joshua  i— xi,  xxiii,  xxiv. 

Never  in  any  literature  was  there  a  more  splen- 
did hero  than  Joshua.  We  see  him  first  in  the 
book  of  Exodus  as  a  youthful  warrior,  fresh  from 
Egyptian  slavery,  yet  with  spirit  uncowed  by 
slavery,  fighting  the  battle  of  the  Lord  against 
Amelek.  Joshua  is  the  first  soldier  of  Hebrew 
history,  and  it  is  a  very  significant  fact  that 
according  to  Hebrew  tradition  he  was  the  typical 
bosom  friend  ;  his  loyal  "  service  "  of  Moses  the 
first  example  of  pure  and  dear  friendship.  His 
character  stands  out  as  clear  as  that  of  Hector  or 
Achilles  or  Miles  Standish  ;  simple,  straightfor- 
ward, undaunted,  "  very  courageous,"  "  not  afraid 
or  dismayed,"  never  checked  by  the  apparently 


202  Telling  Bible  Stories 

impossible,  not  more  baffled  by  the  fears  than  by 
the  sins  of  Israel,  not  a  talker  nor  a  dreamer,  but 
a  fighter.  In  all  this  we  see  the  old  epic  hero. 
And  yet  there  was  this  difference  :  in  all  his 
exploits  he  was  ever  led  by  the  heavenly  vision. 
The  captain  of  the  Lord's  host  had  appeared  to 
him  with  a  drawn  sword  in  his  hand,  and  that 
glittering  sword  he  followed,  in  the  long,  mysteri- 
ous march  about  the  walls  of  Jericho,  up  the  steep 
valley  to  Ai  and  Michinash,  across  the  narrow 
plateau  to  Bethhoron  and  the  marvellous  rout 
of  the  Philistines  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon,  over 
mountain  and  plain  to  Merom,  and  through  long 
years  of  stout  warfare  till  at  last  it  rested  beside 
the  sanctuary  at  Shechem. 

The  story  of  Joshua  affords  a  splendid  opportu- 
nity for  the  children  to  become  thoroughly  well 
acquainted  with  the  topography  of  Palestine,  of 
which  they  have  already  learned  much,  and  it  will 
be  their  serious  loss  if,  with  the  book  of  Joshua  in 
hand  and  the  relief  map  before  them,  the  mother 
does  not  take  this  opportunity  to  give  them  that 
familiarity  with  the  country,  both  comprehensive 
and  detailed,  which  will  serve  to  give  concrete 
reality  to  all  their  Bible  reading,  and  sooner  or 
later  to  solve  many  historic  problems  which  for 
want  of  such  familiarity  have  been  found  puzzling. 
In  all  the  epic  tales  of  Israel  the  battle-fields  are 


Hero  Tales  203 

accurately  described  —  just  as  they  are  in  Homer. 
The  guide-book  for  the  vale  of  Elah,  for  Mich- 
mash,  Jezreel,  Jeshimon,  that  devastation  of  the 
south  country,  is  to-day  the  stories  of  David  and 
Goliath,  of  Jonathan  and  the  Philistine  host,  of 
Gideon's  victory,  and  Saul's  pursuit  of  David. 
But  most  accurately  of  all  is  the  country  de- 
scribed in  the  book  of  Joshua  :  not,  as  we  might 
perhaps  have  supposed,  in  those  chapters  which 
describe  the  partition  of  the  land  among  the 
twelve  tribes  ;  these  are  extremely  confused ;  but 
in  those  chapters  which  narrate  the  truly  epic 
story  of  Joshua,  the  first  ten  chapters  and  the 
last  two,  with  other  bits  among  which  the  land 
records  have  been  interwoven. 

The  epic  character  of  the  Joshua  narrative  is 
strikingly  brought  out  in  many  of  its  incidents ; 
that  of  the  disaster  at  Ai  is  particularly  so,  show- 
ing all  the  more  strikingly  against  the  advanced 
—  almost  modern  —  teaching  of  the  demoralizing 
effect  of  plunder  and  booty  upon  an  army.  The 
epic  character  shows  again  when,  no  more  deterred 
by  repulse  than  Agamemnon's  forces  before  Troy, 
Joshua  brought  to  bear  his  strategic  ability,  —  an 
ambush,  a  mock  defeat,  an  overwhelming  victory  ; 
and  the  Eastern  key  to  the  Judean  plateau  was 
his. 

The  next  incident,  the  visit  of  the  wily  Gibeon- 


204  Telling  Bible  Stories 

ites  and  the  artless  absence  of  suspicion  with 
which  Joshua  fell  a  victim  to  their  stratagem  and 
made  an  alliance  with  them,  believing  them  to  be 
a  distant  people,  is  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  old 
epic,  and  forms  a  most  artistic  introduction  to  the 
thrilling  situation  that  follows,  when  the  five 
neighboring  Amoritish  chiefs,  inspired  with  alarm 
by  the  conquest  of  Jericho  and  Ai,  and  the  evident 
terror  of  Gibeon,  made  common  cause  against  that 
town,  perceiving  that  the  first  step  must  be  to 
destroy  the  traitorous  city.  Gibeon  at  once  made 
an  urgent  appeal  to  its  ally,  Joshua.  The  map 
will  show  that  it  was  by  a  forced  march  that 
Joshua  appeared  on  the  morning  after  the  urgent 
message  came.  The  battle  that  follows  is  little 
less  than  Homeric.  In  the  early  morning  the 
sleeping  hosts  of  besiegers  and  besieged  were 
awakened  by  a  terrific  shout  of  Joshua  and  his 
men.  Up  from  their  tents  beside  the  spring  they 
started,  the  five  kings  of  Amor  and  their  hosts, 
and  fled,  closely  pursued  up  the  steep  ascent  to 
Bethhoron  the  Upper  that  lies  at  the  head  of  the 
pass.  "  All  day  long  the  noise  of  battle  rolled  " 
up  and  down  the  valley.  Dead  bodies  of  the  A  mo- 
rites  line  the  narrow  path  over  the  ridge  and  are 
strewn  along  the  steep  descent  to  the  lower  Beth- 
horon. Up  from  the  Western  sea  comes  a  black 
cloud  moving  rapidly.  Thunder  mutters,  the 


Hero  Tales  205 

cloud  is  rent  by  lightning,  then  the  storm  bursts, 
and  with  hail  and  thunderbolt  the  Lord  himself 
comes  to  the  succor  of  his  captain.  And  as  the 
sun  breaks  through  the  black  thunder  cloud,  and 
the  watery  moon  appears  a  thin  crescent  over  the 
southern  hills,  showing  the  piled-up  dead  and  the 
scattered  band  of  fugitives  tearing  down  the  lower 
pass,  Joshua  makes  that  impassioned  appeal  for  a 
longer  day  that  this  epic  writer  found  enshrined 
in  the  folk-lore  of  an  earlier  time  :  — 

Be  thou  still,  O  Sun,  upon  Gibeon, 

And  thou,  Moon,  upon  the  valley  of  Ajalon  I 

More  in  the  spirit  of  Scandinavian  epic  is  the 
grim  story  of  the  slaughter  of  the  five  kings  ;  but 
it  is  epic  none  the  less.  The  strategic  importance 
of  the  victories  of  Ai  and  Gibeon  will  be  appreci- 
ated by  the  children  who  are  "  in "  history,  and 
who  know  their  relief  map.  By  it  the  Southern 
Canaanites  were  cut  off  from  those  in  the  north, 
and  the  great  victory  of  Barak  afterward  made  pos- 
sible. "  Divide  and  conquer  "  might  have  been 
Joshua's  motto,  and  it  was  his  policy,  as  well  as 
Caesar's. 

In  precise  analogy  with  the  long  addresses  of 
tjie  epic  heroes  is  the  farewell  address  of  Joshua. 
The  scene  is  the  very  setting  of  a  hero  tale.  It  is 
the  classic  spot  where  Abraham  erected  his  first 


206  Telling  Bible  Stories 

altar,  the  "  parcel  of  ground  "  which  Jacob  bought 
of  the  sons  of  Amor  and  bequeathed  to  his  beloved 
Joseph,  and  the  burial-place  of  that  beloved  son. 
On  either  side  uprose  the  mounts  of  blessing  and 
cursing,  Ebal  and  Gerizim.  In  their  solemn  pres- 
ence Joshua  rehearsed  all  that  hero  history  which 
they  had  received  from  lip  to  lip  for  half  a  score 
of  generations  :  how  their  fathers  had  dwelt  on 
the  other  side  of  the  flood  (the  Euphrates)  and 
served  other  gods  ;  how  Abraham  had  broken 
with  these  idolatries  and  followed  the  One  God, 
though  the  mysterious  leading  drew  him  to  exile 
in  a  strange  land  ;  how  his  descendants  had  gone 
down  to  Egypt,  had  been  rescued  from  Egyp- 
tian bondage,  miraculously  guided  and  protected 
through  the  long  wilderness  journey,  and  had 
conquered  Palestine,  all  through  the  power  of 
Jehovah,  the  One  God  of  Abraham.  Now  they 
had  come  into  the  inheritance  promised  to  Abra- 
ham's seed,  kept  in  trust  for  them  by  God  through 
these  hundreds  of  years.  It  is  all  epic,  but  it  is 
Hebrew  epic,  since  its  purpose  and  its  result  were 
to  inspire  the  great  audience  to  renew  their  oath 
of  allegiance  to  the  God  of  their  fathers. 


Hero  Tales  207 


The  limits  of  this  chapter  forbid  a  more  detailed 
review  of  the  splendid  epic  story  of  Israel.  In 
the  language  of  the  writer  to  the  Hebrews,  "the 
time  would  fail  me  "  to  tell  the  story  of  Gideon 
and  Othniel  and  Ehud,  of  Abimelech  and  Jephthah 
and  Micah,  and  of  that  most  epical  episode,  the 
Benjamite  war.  A  mere  word  may  be  said  as  to 
the  special  interest  of  the  story  of  Micah  from  the 
irrepressible  humor  which  pervades  it,  more  artless 
and  spontaneous  than  in  other  Old  Testament 
story.  Its  historic  significance  in  unravelling  the 
tangled  web  of  Israel's  history,  immediately  after 
the  conquest,  is  far  greater  than  has  generally 
been  perceived.  And  it  is  rich  in  suggestions  of 
the  customs  and  religious  ideas  of  Israel  in  that 
early  time  —  the  taboo  (the  "  curse "  laid  by 
Micah's  mother  upon  the  stolen  silver),  the 
methods  of  "  inquiring  of  God,"  the  priestly  office, 
and  many  more.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
stories  of  Gideon,  Abimelech,  Jephthah,  and  of 
the  Benjamite  war,  in  some  of  which,  also,  the 
humor  approaches  to  that  of  the  Micah  story.  In 
some  of  these  the  religious  sentiment  is  less  clear 
than  in  others  ;  yet  the  impression  which  they 
cannot  but  make  upon  the  youngest  child  is  a 


208  Telling  Bible  Stories 

genuinely  religious  one,  while  to  the  older  chil- 
dren, acquainted  with  the  epics  of  other  peoples, 
the  contrast  between  the  religious  ideas  of  Israel 
and  of  other  peoples  must  be  very  striking.  All 
epics  show  an  underlying  consciousness  of  the 
relationship  of  man  with  the  divine.  The  Greeks 
believed  that  men  were  sons  of  the  gods  ;  so  did 
the  Hindus  and  the  Scandinavians.  The  He- 
brews believed  that  man  was  the  son  of  God,  but 
the  conception  of  the  relationship  was  otherwise 
different  than  the  difference  in  the  conceptions  of 
deity.  It  was  the  method  of  the  sonship  that 
made  all  the  difference.  To  peoples  at  large,  it 
was  the  method  of  human  relationship  ;  to  Israel 
it  was  the  method  of  the  inbreathed  soul.  And 
in  the  case  of  Israel  this  relationship  was  con- 
ceived of  not  as  an  end  in  itself  for  the  man  or 
the  nation  :  Israel  was  the  chosen  of  God  th?,t  he 
might  be  a  blessing  to  the  world.  No  other  epic 
writer  ever  had  such  a  thought. 


VI 

The  children  who  know  the  "Arabian  Nights" 
in  Lane's  translation  will  be  very  familiar  with  the 
habit  of  "  dropping  into  poetry,"  indulged  in  by 
all  their  heroes  from  the  Khaleef  to  the  fisherman 


Hero  Tales  209 

and  the  donkey  boy.  The  like  habit  prevails 
among  the  Persians,  the  Mongols,  and  nearly  all 
Eastern  peoples,  and  it  is  by  no  means  a  mere  lit- 
erary feature  of  the  stories.  Naturally,  the  early 
Israelites  had  the  same  custom,  and  the  songs  and 
snatches  of  poetry  in  the  Old  Testament  are  there 
in  conformity  to  general  custom.  The  children, 
accustomed  to  this  literary  method,  will  not  be 
surprised  to  find  Hannah  and  Miriam  bursting 
into  song  in  moments  of  intense  feeling,  and  men 
less  gifted  than  they  expressing  themselves  in  like 
manner.  Nor  will  they  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
echoes  of  other  poems  are  found  in  the  Song  of 
Moses  and  the  Magnificat  of  Mary,  the  mother  of 
the  Lord.  This  is  the  custom  of  Eastern  peoples, 
whose  memories  are  saturated  with  the  poetic  lore 
of  their  country,  which  forms  the  chief  element  in 
education  and  the  staple  of  their  intellectual  food. 
They  will  not  be  surprised  when  scraps  of  poetry 
are  mingled  with  ordinary  description  or  conver- 
sation ;  this  is  the  manner  of  the  East.  If  these 
scraps  of  quotation  were  always  printed  in  poetic 
form,  as  a  large  number  of  them  are  not,  even  in 
the  Revised  Version  (and  none  of  them  in  the 
Authorized),  this  illustration  of  the  mental  pro- 
cesses of  Israel  would  be  still  more  evident.  The 
historian  of  Joshua  puts  upon  his  lips  a  fragment 
of  an  ancient  ode  of  victory  when  he  conquers  the 


210  Telling  Bible  Stories 

kings  at  Bethhoron.1  Samuel  remonstrates  with 
his  sons  in  a  rhymed  proverb,  and  the  prophet 
Amos  warns  Israel  with  another.  The  Israelitish 
people  triumph  over  Sihon  and  Og  in  some  of 
those  "  sarcastic  verses "  which  the  Moshelim 
taught  them.  War  songs,  travel  odes,  dirges  — 
there  are  fragments  of  them  ail  through  the  book, 
quotations  from  the  book  of  the  Wars  of  the  Lord 
(that  is,  of  Israel),  from  the  book  of  the  Valiant 
(Jasher),  and  from  the  book  of  Dirges  in  which 
Jeremiah's  lament  over  Josiah  was  preserved. 
To  recognize  these  passages  as  precisely  what 
they  are  is  to  be  safeguarded  against  false  inter- 
pretations in  many  instances. 

VII 

The  children  will  hardly  have  reached  the  age 
of  twelve  or  fourteen  years  without  more  than 
once  observing  what  has  already  been  pointed  out, 
that  numbers  are  used  in  the  Old  Testament  not 
so  much  for  giving  precise  information,  as  in  a 
symbolical  way.  When  they  make  that  division 
of  Judges  into  its  natural  chapters  which  has 
already  been  suggested,  they  will  perceive  that 
nearly  all  the  events  occupied  periods  of  forty  or 

1  And  there  are  commentators  to  this  day  who  insist  upon 
reading  it  as  historical  description. 


Hero  Tales  211 

twenty  or  eighty  years.  They  had  already  ob- 
served the  frequent  recurrence  of  the  number 
seven,  and  perhaps  of  the  number  three.  It  will 
be  a  pleasant  literary  exercise  for  them  about  this 
time  or  soon  after  to  look  into  these  numbers, 
and  try  to  ascertain  precisely  what  they  signify. 
With  regard  to  the  number  forty,  which  is  so 
general  and  apparently  so  definite  a  period,  they 
will  soon  come  to  perceive  that  it  stands  not  so 
much  for  precisely  so  many  years  as  for  (in  round 
numbers)  a  generation,  such  as  we  usually  con- 
sider thirty,  or  thirty-three  years  to  be.  No  such 
vital  statistics  were  kept  in  those  days  as  govern- 
ments now  find  necessary.  There  was  no  way, 
except  tradition,  for  the  writers  to  discover  the 
age  of  any  one,  or,  until  the  historic  period,  when 
the  recording  of  annals  began,  the  date  of  any 
event.  In  general,  they  could  gather  that  a  king 
reigned  or  a  chief  protected  the  people  for  about 
the  average  lifetime  of  an  adult,  or  was  cut  off 
before  his  time,  or  a  certain  condition  outlasted 
the  time  of  any  one  then  living  ;  but  nothing 
more  definite  than  that  ;  and  it  saved  discrepan- 
cies and  exaggerations,  to  make  the  period  a  gen- 
eration or  half  a  generation,  or  two  generations. 
Then  nobody  made  a  mistake  in  repeating  the 
story  to  his  children  or  neighbors,  while  yet 
they  had  no  books  to  keep  things  in  permanent 


212  Telling  Bible  Stories 

form.  The  use  of  the  number  forty  gradually 
extended  to  other  periods  than  years,  and  for  the 
same  reason.  One  of  the  flood  accounts  says  that 
it  rained  for  forty  days,  and  that  after  the  rain 
ceased  Noah  waited  forty  days  before  sending  out 
the  raven. 

As  for  three  and  seven,  they  have  been  deemed 
"sacred  numbers"  among  all  primitive  peoples. 
Seven  and  ten  (which  is  seven  plus  three)  appear 
constantly  in  Hindu  myth  and  Egyptian  legend. 
They  appear  in  every  country.  We  hear  of  the 
seven  wonders  of  the  world,  seven  sleepers,  seven- 
leagued  boots,  the  seven  wise  men  of  Greece,  the 
seven  champions  of  Christendom.  There  were 
"  seven  great  saints  "  in  the  principal  periods  of 
Hindu  history.  In  like  manner  seven  appears 
very  persistently  in  the  antediluvian  story,  as  well 
as  later.  There  are  seven  generations  of  Cain- 
ites.  Sevenfold  vengeance  was  to  be  taken  on  the 
slayer  of  Cain,  seventy  times  sevenfold  on  him 
who  should  harm  his  descendant  Lamech.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  other  Lamech,  the 
descendant  of  Seth,  lived  seven  hundred  and 
seventy-seven  years.  Enoch,  the  brightest  star 
in  the  antediluvian  galaxy,  was  the  seventh  from 
Adam.  Seven  appears  constantly  in  the  flood 
story,  the  creatures  saved  by  sevens,  seven  days' 
respite  before  the  flood,  the  ark  resting  on  Ararat 


Hero  Tales  213 

in  the  seventh  month,  seven-day  intervals  between 
the  sending  out  of  the  birds.  We  also  learn  that 
seventy  souls  went  with  Jacob  to  Egypt,  although 
a  count  of  the  names  makes  it  necessary  to  include 
Joseph  and  his  family  who  were  already  there, 
and  no  mention  is  made  of  the  many  servants  and 
retainers  who  must  have  gone  with  them.  This 
again  proves  that  numerical  accuracy  was  not  the 
thing  aimed  at.  A  little  reflection  on  the  in- 
stances mentioned  shows  that  what  was  sought 
was  the  idea  of  sufficiency,  completeness.  Seven 
was  "  the  perfect  number,"  and  any  multiple  of  it 
expressed  completeness  in  a  superlative  degree. 
That  seventy  souls  went  to  Egypt  signifies  that 
the  number  was  complete,  not  one  left  behind. 
So  when  Simon  Peter  asked  the  Lord  how  often 
he  should  forgive  his  brother,  he  thought  that 
"  until  seven  times "  expressed  the  utmost  that 
could  possibly  be  demanded,  and  our  Saviour's 
answer,  "  till  seventy  times  seven,"  lifted  the  idea 
into  the  region  of  absolute  perfection.1 

Three  was  above  all  others  the  perfect  number 

1  So  when  Elijah  was  discouraged  by  the  crushing  out  of 
Jehovah  worship  by  Ahab,  God  told  him  that  there  were  still 
seven  thousand  Jehovah  worshippers  (1  Kings  xix.  18), — a 
perfect  number.  Ahab's  army  after  his  repentance  was  seven 
thousand  men,  "  even  all  the  children  of  Israel "  (Ib.  xx.  15), 
—  a  representative  and  perfect  number,  sufficient  for  God's 
purposes. 


214  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Nearly  every  nation,  however  polytheistic,  has 
a  trinity  of  its  chief  gods,  and  the  triangle  and 
the  trefoil,  used  in  Christian  churches  to  in- 
dicate the  idea  of  trinity,  are  found  in  heathen 
temples  all  over  the  world.  Three  appears  in 
folk-lore  of  all  countries :  three  sisters,  three 
wishes,  three  tests  of  every  conceivable  sort, 
three  knights  in  armor.  The  three  angels  who 
came  to  Abraham  are  in  the  same  category, 
though  raised  above  it,  as  we  have  so  often  seen 
that  Israelitish  folk-lore  is  raised  above  that  of 
other  peoples.  The  number  three  appears  in 
genealogies  in  a  significant  way. 

Enoch,  we  have  seen,  was  the  seventh  from 
Adam,  and  Noah  was  the  tenth,  the  third  after 
Enoch.  Noah,  the  tenth  from  Adam,  had  three 
sons  among  whom  the  world  was  divided.  Terah 
was  the  tenth  from  Noah,  and  he  also  had  three 
sons  of  whom  Abraham  was  one.  Levi,  the 
father  of  the  priesthood  of  Israel,  had  also  three 
sons  among  whose  descendants  the  priestly  func- 
tions were  divided  during  the  wilderness  march, 
which,  we  remember,  was  of  forty  years.  Mani- 
festly these  things  were  not  accident,  so  far  as 
the  writers  were  concerned.  They  were  features 
in  a  carefully  devised  plan.  If  all  the  gen- 
ealogical lists  had  been  preserved  without  error 
or  mutilation,  —  a  thing  impossible,  —  it  would 


Hero  Tales  215 

doubtless  be  found  that  this  numerical  system 
was  carried  out  through  the  whole  Old  Testament 
story.  And  even  now,  with  all  the  puzzles  aris- 
ing from  the  errors  of  recopying  through  thou- 
sands of  years,  the  genealogical  chapters  of  the 
various  books  afford  an  interesting  and  pictu- 
resque field  of  study  for  the  older  children.  Of 
course  the  little  ones  have  no  concern  in  it. 

The  number  ten  appears  to  be  particularly 
appropriate  to  genealogy.  The  Chaldseans  had 
ten  prehistoric  kings  who  together  reigned  four 
hundred  and  thirty-two  thousand  years,  their  lives 
far  outlasting  those  of  the  Biblical  antediluvians. 
Arab,  Chinese,  Hindu,  and  German  legends  each 
tell  of  ten  mythical  ancestors.  The  Egyptians 
had  three  times  ten  early  kings.  The  biblical 
account  is  allied  to  all  these,  but  with  one  very 
striking  difference :  none  of  the  other  peoples 
had  an  Enoch. 

That  the  number  ten  in  the  Old  Testament 
chronology  is  important  simply  as  forming  the 
framework  of  the  story  is  evident  because  in  the 
first  chapter  of  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  the  entire 
history,  from  Abraham  to  Christ,  is  divided  into 
three  periods  of  twice  seven  generations.  A 
comparison  with  the  Old  Testament  shows  that  a 
number  of  names  have  been  dropped  out  in  the 
interest  of  the  scheme. 


216  Telling  Bible  Stories 

This  gives  a  clue  to  the  whole  subject,  and  it 
corresponds  with  what  we  have  discovered  about 
the  number  forty.  The  question  with  all  writers 
in  the  period  when  books  were  scarce,  and  few 
could  afford  to  possess  them  or  knew  how  to 
read  them,  was  to  aid  the  memory  of  the  people, 
whose  only  means  of  giving  or  communicating 
knowledge  was  by  word  of  mouth.  The  precise 
number  of  years  or  persons  or  days  mattered  lit- 
tle :  a  fixed  number  was  important,  that  the  story 
might  not  be  tampered  with  —  that  in  the  case 
of  lists  no  new  name  might  be  inserted  without 
detection.  This  is  also  the  reason  for  the  fre- 
quent repetitions  of  folk-lore,  and  for  the  preva- 
lence of  the  numbers  three  and  seven.  Every 
child  can  recall  numberless  instances  of  such 
repetition.  They  were  both  aids  to  memory  and 
safeguards  against  change. 

We  shall  presently  find  an  illustration  of  this 
method  in  the  Old  Testament.  Let  the  children 
become  familiar  with  these  facts  in  this  connec- 
tion. They  will  be  so  many  lights  to  illumine 
problems  which  others  have  found  puzzling. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
ROMANCE  STORIES 


DEAN  SANDERS  of  Yale  Theological  Seminary 
lately  said  that  the  Old  Testament  histories  are 
of  the  John  Fiske  type  rather  than  the  McMas- 
ter  type.  Professor  Fiske's  purpose  was  always 
something  far  higher  than  the  statement  of  facts, 
the  ascertaining  of  the  historic  truth  of  the  events 
which  he  narrates.  That  is  Mr.  McMaster's 
ideal,  and  he  lives  up  to  it.  We  can  rely  on  his 
painstaking  accuracy.  We  know  that  he  has 
thoroughly  sifted  all  the  evidence,  has  been  per- 
spicacious as  to  the  significance  of  the  original 
documents,  has  tested,  collated,  summed  up,  the 
results  of  investigation,  and  has  arrived  as  nearly 
as  possible  at  the  exact  truth.  Professor  Fiske's 
idea  in  writing  was  quite  different.  It  was  always 
to  enable  his  readers  to  see  the  significance  of  any 
event  or  period  of  our  history,  the  contribution  it 
made  to  the  development  of  the  great  principles  — 
for  instance,  of  liberty  —  upon  which  our  govern- 
ment is  built.  There  is  no  one,  I  imagine,  who 

217 


218  Telling  Bible  Stories 

would  rank  Fiske's  histories  lower  than  McMas- 
ter's  as  to  trustworthiness,  though  his  ideal  is  so 
different.  No  one  would  dream  of  saying  that 
McMaster  gives  him  a  more  accurate  view  of  the 
past  of  this  country  than  Fiske.  And  as  to  its 
future,  every  reader,  however  little  of  a  philosopher, 
must  feel  that  Fiske  is  by  far  the  truer  prophet. 
In  fact,  Mr.  McMaster  has  nothing  to  do  with 
prophecy:  he  does  not  undertake  to  forecast  the 
future,  and  one  must  read  into  his  books  all  he  is 
to  get  out  of  them  for  guidance  in  future  conduct 
as  a  citizen.  Whereas  we  may  almost  class  Fiske's 
work  as  prophetic  history,  so  clearly  does  it  set 
before  the  reader  the  inevitable  tendency  and  out- 
come of  the  past. 

It  is  very  clear  that  the  Old  Testament  histories 
are  far  more  of  the  Fiske  than  of  the  McMaster 
type.  They  are  not  half  so  much  concerned  to 
make  their  readers  thoroughly  well  informed  as  to 
the  historic  events  of  a  given  period  as  to  show 
the  place  of  that  period  and  its  personages  in  the 
development  of  the  great  plan  of  God.  All  the 
so-called  historic  books  are  illustrations  of  this 
method,  and  particularly  so  the  book  of  Judges, 
some  of  whose  stories  we  have  studied.  That 
book  affords  an  admirable  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  there  is  more  than  one  way  of  writing  history. 
To  discover  that  some  of  the  historic  books  are 


Romance  Storie*  219 

properly  to  be  classed  with  epic,  and  some  with 
prophecy,  is  no  more  to  deny  their  trustworthiness 
than  their  inspiration.  In  fact,  the  Jews  them- 
selves do  not  class  any  of  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures  with  history.  They  rank  the  books  of 
Joshua,  Judges,  Samuel,  and  Kings  with  prophecy, 
although,  properly  enough,  not  in  the  same  class 
with  the  great  prophetic  books. 

It  is  extremely  important  to  bear  these  facts  in 
mind  in  telling  Bible  stories  to  children  of  various 
ages.  Young  children  do  not  ask  for  literal  ac- 
curacy; that  is  not  a  matter  that  enters  their 
minds,  though  they  may  often  ask  if  a  story  is 
true,  for  their  little  souls  reach  up  for  truth  as  a 
flower  reaches  up  to  the  sunlight.  But  it  is  sadly 
possible  for  a  mother  so  to  teach  her  child  that 
truth  is  the  same  as  literal  fact,  that  his  faith  in 
the  Bible  as  the  inspired  message  from  God  will 
be  shaken  by  his  own  thoughtful  reading  of  it  as 
he  grows  older,  even  though  he  never  hear  a  word 
of  what  is  called  modern  criticism. 

The  Samuel  stories  are  admirable  illustrations 
of  what  we  may  call  the  Fiske  method  of  writing 
history  —  the  prophetic  method.  Though  there  is 
much  epic  material  in  the  life  of  Samuel,  the  older 
children  will  feel,  though  they  may  not  be  able  to 
explain,  the  difference  between  the  Samuel  and 
the  Joshua  stories,  for  example.  Yet  if  these 


220  Telling  Bible  Stories 

stories  are  not  properly  speaking  epic,  neither 
are  they  biography,  nor  yet  a  history  of  Samuel's 
time,  for  they  leave  great  periods  in  his  life  un- 
touched, and  neither  biography  nor  history  may 
do  that.  More  than  once  the  writer  passes  over 
twenty  years  or  more  without  a  word,  though  we 
may  easily  perceive  that  they  were  very  important 
years  in  Samuel's  and  his  country's  history.  The 
chapters  about  Samuel  are  just  a  succession  of 
Bible  stories,  bound  together  by  a  controlling  pur- 
pose into  a  wonderful  historic  sermon  with  a  deep 
religious  meaning. 

This  method  of  dealing  with  facts  as  lessons  is 
not  confined  to  the  Old  Testament ;  it  is  charac- 
teristic of  all  oriental  works  of  history.  Neither 
an  Arabian  nor  a  Chinese  historian  thinks  of 
writing  a  logical  history,  bringing  out  all  the  facts 
in  their  order  and  connection.  Any  missionary 
learned  in  the  classics  of  China  will  tell  us  that 
the  purpose  of  Chinese  history  is  simply  to  make 
certain  impressions,  to  deal  with  the  past  as  les- 
sons ;  and  so  it  is  with  other  oriental  historians. 
The  writers  of  the  Bible,  who  also  were  orientals, 
succeed  with  this  method  to  a  marvellous  degree, 
and  this  is  why  interest  in  the  Bible  is  so  univer- 
sal and  so  permanent.  The  persons  and  incidents 
of  which  it  treats  are  in  their  way  universal.  The 
figures  are  the  work  of  an  artist  rather  than  a 


Romance  Stories  221 

historian,  and  therefore  they  are  revelation.  A 
revelation  from  God,  Dr.  Matheson  tells  us,  is  not 
merely  a  statement  of  what  man  once  did,  but 
of  what  men  may  always  do.  "It  is  the  special 
announcement  of  that  which  is  not  special,  of  the 
universal  order  of  God's  works  and  ways,  to  man." 
Yet  this  revelation  is  made  through  the  story 
of  an  individual  because  in  fact  that  which  is  per- 
manent in  history  is  not  the  characteristics  of  a 
race,  but  the  traits  of  an  individual.  The  typical 
man  is  the  man  who  best  realizes  himself. 

II 

In  none  of  the  Bible  stories  is  this  "  fine  sense 
of  divine  purposefulness,"  this  realization  by  an 
individual  that  his  life  is  a  part  of  the  plan  of 
God,  more  perfectly  shown  than  in  those  of  which 
Samuel  is  the  hero.  Nor  is  there  any  story  in  the 
Bible  more  perfectly  adapted  to  the  very  little 
child  than  some  parts  of  Samuel's  story.  But  as 
no  one  is  so  foolish  as  to  undertake  to  teach  a  little 
child  about  the  prophetic  character  of  Bible  his- 
tory, or  how  it  reveals  a  divine  purpose,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  not  every  incident  of  Samuel's  story, 
nor  his  history  as  a  whole,  is  particularly  adapted 
to  the  very  young  child.  In  this  it  differs  from 
those  "morning  stories,"  and  those  patriarch  stories 


222  Telling  Bible  Stories 

which  we  have  studied.  It  belongs  in  a  different 
literary  class.  As  we  have  seen,  the  stories  in  the 
first  eleven  chapters  of  Genesis  are  of  the  class 
which  in  other  literatures  is  mythology,  ancient 
folk  tales  in  which  the  people  of  earlier  times 
attempted  to  explain  the  mysteries  of  nature ; 
and  having  been  redeemed  from  that  class  in 
order  to  be  made  the  vehicle  of  religious  truth, 
they  are  precisely  and  marvellously  adapted  to 
the  very  little  child.  Every  one  of  them  can  be 
so  told  as  to  open  to  a  child  precisely  the  truth 
they  actually  embody.  The  patriarch  stories  be- 
long in  the  class  called  legend;  more  definitely, 
as  we  have  seen,  they  are  in  the  class  of  the  old 
Icelandic  or  Scandinavian  Sagas,  designed  to  pre- 
serve all  that  could  be  gathered  up  of  popular 
ideas  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Israelitish  nation. 
But  the  writer  had  a  far  larger  purpose  than  ani- 
mates our  folk-lore  societies,  for  example :  he  not 
only,  like  them,  carefully  collected  all  that  he 
could  find  in  the  memories  of  the  people  (or  in 
earlier  writings),  but  he  made  these  folk  legends 
the  concrete  presentation  of  great  abstract  truths. 
The  hero  tales,  being  epic,  are  simply  an  advanced 
method  of  accomplishing  the  dual  purpose.  Epic, 
as  we  have  seen,  always  lies  at  the  basis  of  every 
religion.  But  in  the  epic  stories  of  the  Bible  the 
religious  implications  became  more  personal,  more 


Romance  Stories  223 

practical  and  definite  than  in  those  of  the  two 
earlier  classes.  All  these  Old  Testament  stories 
differ  from  other  oriental  literatures  of  their  class, 
not  by  greater  historic  accuracy,  which  indeed 
may  be  theirs,  and  which  is  only  a  question  of 
less  or  more,  but  by  the  spiritual  truths  of  which 
they  have  been  made  a  medium. 

Ill 

With  Samuel  we  come  to  another  class  of  stories. 
They  have  some  epical  features,  but  they  are  evi- 
dently not  epics.  They  belong  in  a  class  which 
in  the  development  of  literature  comes  later  than 
epic,  much  later  than  myth.  They  are  like  the 
old  Middle  Age  romances  and  tales  of  chivalry, 
such  as  King  Arthur  and  Roland,  and  those  which 
are  most  splendidly  told  by  the  old  Spanish 
romancers.  The  Old  Testament  romances  differ 
from  these  tales  of  chivalry,  precisely  as  the 
earlier  stories  differ  from  mythology  and  legend, 
by  the  spiritual  truths  of  which  they  have  been 
made  the  vehicle. 

As  these  stories  belong  in  a  different  class  from 
the  Bible  stories  which  precede  them,  so  they 
demand  a  different  treatment  from  the  others. 
The  mother  will  at  once  perceive  that  the  most 
obvious  teachings  of  the  stories  of  Samuel  and 


224  Telling  Bible  Stories 

David  and  Elijah,  the  purpose  for  which  they 
have  been  preserved,  are  not  universal  but 
national.  Using  the  false  divisions  of  the  present 
day,  they  have  to  do  not  so  much  with  religion 
as  with  politics.  The  Hebrews  made  no  such 
division,  nor  shall  we  when  we  gain  a  true  con- 
ception of  both  religion  and  politics. 

Evidently  these  truths,  however  much  we  may 
simplify  them,  do  not  awaken  in  the  mind  of  the 
little  child  the  same  response  which  the  earlier 
stories  do,  although  there  are  parts  of  them  in 
which  they  will  find  interest  and  delight.  And 
when  we  come  to  the  story  of  Joash,  which  is 
true  history,  we  find  that  though  it  is  full  of 
interest  for  the  boy  of  ten  or  twelve,  there  is 
very  little  in  it  for  the  child  of  three  or  four. 
The  fundamental  difference  between  the  mother's 
treatment  of  these  stories  and  of  the  earlier  ones 
lies  in  this  :  the  entire  outline  of  the  latter  can 
be  told  to  the  youngest  child  and  adapted  to  his 
advancing  processes  of  education.  The  romance 
stories,  on  the  contrary,  must  be  adapted  to  the 
various  periods  in  the  child's  intellectual  growth, 
not  by  development  but  by  selection,  telling  him 
at  first  only  such  incidents  as  he  can  appreciate, 
and  adding  to  the  story  as  he  grows  older. 


Romance  Storie*  225 

IV 

1  Samuel  i;  ii.  11,  12,  18,  19;  iii. 

There  can  be  no  lovelier  story  for  the  little 
child  than  the  first  and  third  chapters  of  1  Samuel 
with  some  verses  of  the  second  chapter.  I  should 
also  include  the  fourth  chapter,  notwithstanding 
its  tragic  end,  at  least  by  the  time  he  is  four  years 
old ;  for  it  is  necessary  to  round  out  the  story  — 
necessary,  that  is,  to  justify  it  morally  to  the 
child.  The  prophecy  to  little  Samuel  of  the  pun- 
ishment of  Eli's  sons  is  not  alien  to  the  heart  of 
a  child.  On  the  contrary,  he  will  highly  approve 
of  it,  and  the  tragedy  itself  contains  no  grewsome 
details,  but  is  on  a  high  level  of  pathos  and 
dignity. 

At  a  very  early  age,  six  or  seven,  at  latest,  it 
will  be  possible  to  make  much  of  the  local  customs 
which  crop  up  all  through  the  story.  Especially 
is  it  good  to  make  more  of  the  yearly  feast  than 
we  are  in  the  habit  of  doing.  The  idyllic  charac- 
ter of  these  joyous  vintage  festivals,  which  were 
so  important  in  the  life  of  all  ancient  peoples, 
makes  strong  appeal  to  the  little  child,  and  puts 
it  in  the  right  condition  of  sympathy  for  under- 
standing Old  Testament  history.  The  mother 
whose  mind  is  colored  by  what  she  learned  in 


226  Telling  Bible  Stories 

childhood  of  the  Mosaic  laws  and  the  customs  de- 
scribed in  the  Pentateuch  will  need  to  be  careful 
here  to  put  nothing  into  the  story  that  does  not 
belong  there.  Let  her  observe  that  nothing  is 
here  said  of  sacrifice  or  atonement,  or  of  any  of 
that  Old  Testament  ritual  in  which  we  have  been 
taught  by  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  to  find 
types  of  the  Christian  dispensation.  This  was 
simply  a  joyful  feast,  like  our  Thanksgiving,  with 
precisely  the  religious  character  which  Thanks- 
giving was  designed  to  have.  The  sacrifice  — 
there  probably  was  one  —  was  simply  giving  God 
a  part,  and  the  first  part,  of  the  joyful  Thanks- 
giving feast ;  for  no  festival  can  be  truly  happy  in 
which  He  has  not  a  share.  We  do  the  same  with 
our  Thanksgiving  festival  when  we  send  good 
things  to  the  poorer  neighbors  whom  we  know,  or 
boxes  to  be  distributed  among  the  poor  in  great 
cities  whom  we  do  not  know,  before  gathering 
around  our  own  table  to  enjoy  our  Thanksgiving 
dinner,  which  should  be  as  truly  a  feast  before  the 
Lord  as  any  in  Old  Testament  story. 

Every  little  child  will  be  sympathetic  with 
Hannah's  longing  for  motherhood.  Does  not  he 
know  that  his  mother  could  not  be  happy  with- 
out her  little  child  ?  And  what  else  could  she  do 
but  pray  God  to  give  her  one  ?  The  child  will 
respond,  too,  both  to  the  pang  and  the  joy  of 


Romance  Stories  227 

giving  little  Samuel  to  God,  and  no  more  beau- 
tiful opportunity  will  ever  occur  than  this  story 
of  little  Samuel,  lent  to  the  Lord  as  long  as  he 
should  live,  by  the  mother  who  had  longed  for  him 
so  and  had  received  him  from  God  in  answer  to 
her  prayer,  to  instil  into  his  mind  the  truth  of  the 
joy  of  God's  service.  So  he  will  early  learn  to 
feel  that  the  highest  of  all  privileges  is  to  serve 
God,  and  that  the  mother's  truest  happiness  in 
her  child  is  to  have  him  spend  his  life  in  serving 
God. 

The  mother  will  not  have  told  the  story  as  she 
ought  to  have  done  unless  the  child  feels  lonely 
with  little  Samuel,  whose  mother  has  gone  away 
and  left  him,  and  then  grows  glad  again,  because 
Eli  is  very  kind  to  Samuel,  as  good  and  kind  as 
grandpa,  and  Samuel  is  glad  to  serve  God  in  His 
temple  with  kind  old  Eli.  Eli's  naughty  sons 
must  come  in  here,  or  else  the  words  of  God  to 
Samuel  will  be  without  meaning.  The  contrast 
between  serving  God  because  you  love  Him,  as 
old  Eli  and  little  Samuel  did,  and  serving  Him 
without  love,  only  for  the  sake  of  what  you  can 
get,  may  early  be  made  striking  enough  to  justify 
to  a  little  child  the  revelation  to  Samuel;  its 
character,  I  mean,  not  the  fact  of  it,  which  needs 
no  justification  to  a  child.  The  surroundings 
should  be  made  real,  for  young  children  think  in 


228  Telling  BiUe  Storie* 

pictures.  The  mother  may  well  prepare  herself 
for  telling  this  story  by  some  careful  reading  of 
the  "  Encyclopaedia,"  or  of  a  chapter  in  Stanley's 
"History  of  the  Jewish  Church,"  or  some  more 
modern  book  on  the  subject  such  as  she  will 
find  in  any  public  library.  The  mother  who  has 
learned  in  Sunday-school  all  about  the  taber- 
nacle in  the  wilderness,  has  perhaps  never 
observed  that  in  this  story  we  have  nothing  to 
do  with  a  tabernacle.  The  word  is  not  once 
used ;  it  was  not  a  tent  but  a  temple  in  which 
little  Samuel  lived,  a  building  with  doors,  which 
it  was  his  duty  to  open  every  morning,  beside 
which  Eli  had  his  seat  by  day.  In  this  temple 
Eli  and  little  Samuel  slept  at  night,  and  into  it 
Hannah  might  go  to  pray  and  to  sing  her  song  of 
thanksgiving.  Of  course  this  picture  is  not  at  all 
like  that  of  the  tabernacle  described  in  Numbers. 
Into  the  tabernacle  no  woman  or  child  might 
enter,  and  into  the  Holy  of  Holies,  where  the  ark 
was,  only  the  high  priest  might  go,  and  he  only 
once  in  a  year.  But  the  Revised  Version  shows 
(though  the  Authorized  Version  does  not)  that 
the  Hebrew  of  this  story  expressly  says  that 
Samuel  slept  where  the  ark  of  God  was.  How 
there  came  to  be  such  a  change  in  customs  would 
be  an  important  question  if  these  books  in  the  Old 
Testament  were  books  of  history.  But  as  they 


Momance  Stories  229 

are  not,  the  question  does  not  concern  us,  in  con- 
nection with  the  children's  Bible  stories,  and  it 
will  never  disturb  the  children  to  whom  the  Bible 
stories  have  been  properly  told.  If  the  older 
children,  when  they  have  acquired  sufficient  edu- 
cation, care  to  investigate  the  very  interesting 
literary  question  involved,  it  will  do  them  good. 
It  will  not  in  the  least  affect  their  religion. 

This,  however,  is  aside  from  our  present  busi- 
ness. Our  reason  for  wanting  to  make  the  child 
see  the  picture  is  that  he  may  the  more  vividly 
feel  the  marvellous  truth  of  which  it  is  the  setting, 
—  God  in  communion  with  a  little  child.  For 
this  is  a  truth  of  vital  importance,  a  truth  so  won- 
derful that  if  we  do  not  receive  it  "  as  little  chil- 
dren "  we  cannot  receive  it  at  all ;  and  he  can  best 
apprehend  it  to  whom  it  comes  in  the  earliest 
years  of  life  —  God  speaking  to  a  little  boy  and 
making  him  his  co-worker !  And  this  little  boy 
was  no  miracle  :  this  is  what  the  mother  is  privi- 
leged and  commissioned  to  teach  her  children. 
Samuel  was  just  what  every  child  should  be,  what 
every  child  may  be,  one  in  whose  heart  God  will 
love  to  speak,  and  whose  help  God  is  glad  to  have. 

The  story  usually  ends  with  the  announcement 
which  God  made  to  Samuel,  but  artistic  con- 
sistency requires  that  it  should  justify  this  com- 
munication by  the  story  of  the  battle  with  the 


230  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Philistines,  the  capture  of  the  ark,  the  slaughter 
of  Eli's  sons,  and  the  death  of  Eli  himself.  Every 
child  delights  in  the  story  of  battle  ;  he  is  quick 
to  approve  the  justice  of  the  punishment  of  the 
bad  young  men  ;  while  the  dramatic  picture  of  the 
aged  priest,  sitting  by  the  temple  door  in  his  blind- 
ness, tremblingly  eager  for  tidings,  struck  to  the 
heart  by  the  loud  wail  of  the  villagers,  crushed  to 
death  when  the  herald  announces  to  him  the  defeat 
of  Israel's  army,  the  slaughter  of  his  sons  and  the 
capture  of  the  ark  —  the  child  will  see  it  and  hear 
it  all,  and  will  need  no  pointing  of  a  moral  to  make 
him  feel  in  his  innermost  heart  how  wrong-doing 
brings  calamity  to  one's  friends  and  one's  nation. 
He  will  be  ready  now  for  the  last  w^ords  of  the 
story,  that  the  child  who  is  ready  to  hear  God 
speak  grows  up  to  be  known  as  one  to  whom  God 
always  speaks. 

V 

1  Samuel  iv.— xii. 

All  this  is  a  lovely  and  inspiring  story  for  the 
little  child,  and  there  is  not  much  more  in  it  for 
the  growing  boy.  But  in  the  story  of  Samuel's 
later  life  he  will  find  immense  interest  and  inspira- 
tion, for  it  is  a  tale  of  romantic  heroism  or  of 
heroic  romance.  Here  was  a  people  whom  God 


Romance  Stories  231 

intended  to  make  a  blessing  to  the  whole  world, 
given  over  to  an  enemy  who  had  harassed  and 
spoiled  them  for  many  years.  The  purpose  of 
blessing  had  been  forgotten  by  them,  and  God 
Himself  well-nigh  forgotten.  And  here  was  a 
boy  to  whom  He  had  spoken,  a  boy  dedicated  from 
his  birth  to  the  service  of  God,  and  gladly  spend- 
ing his  boyhood  in  serving  Him  in  His  temple  —  a 
little  temple  page,  a  choir  child,  a  helper  at  the 
altar.  Now,  having  grown  a  little  older,  when 
his  beloved  protector  and  master  died,  he  suddenly 
perceived  that  he  was  called  to  a  larger  service 
than  that  of  the  temple ;  that  it  was  for  him  to 
free  Israel  from  her  enemies  and  bring  her  back 
to  the  worship  of  God.  How  splendid  the  appeal 
to  the  ardent  heart  of  the  listening  boy!  How 
every  incident  in  this  romantic  story  will  bring 
out  more  clearly  the  high  type  of  patriotism 
which  the  story  of  Samuel  holds  up  to  the 
American  boy  !  And  when  was  the  lesson  more 
urgently  needed?  It  is  the  lesson  of  patriotism 
that  is  also  religion,  the  true  service  of  God. 
And  it  is  here  taught  in  that  most  impressive 
of  all  forms  to  a  growing  child,  the  form  of  a 
romantic  tale. 

As  Dr.  Matheson  sums  up  Samuel's  life,  "He 
was  to  live  long,  do  much,  suffer  many  things. 
He  was  to  purify  public  worship,  to  root  out 


232  Telling  Bible  Stories 

idolatry,  to  judge  the  tribes  of  Israel,  to  humble 
the  pride  of  the  Philistine,  to  be  the  maker  and 
unmaker  of  kings."  And  he  was  able  to  do  all 
this  not  because  he  was  an  extraordinary  boy,  but 
because  he  was  a  normal  boy  —  what  every  boy 
may  be,  one  to  whom  God  speaks.  The  story 
tells  the  growing  boy  that  a  religious  childhood 
is  the  secret  of  a  life  of  usefulness,  that  a  child- 
hood spent  in  the  mystical  temple  of  God  —  the 
secret  of  his  presence  —  prepares  the  man  for  the 
most  practical  life. 

VI 

1  Samuel  xvi.  1.—13 ;  xvii.  1 ;  xxvi.  25 

For  the  child  of  five  or  six  there  is  one  more 
story  of  Samuel's  later  life.  It  is  a  part  of  the 
story  of  David,  a  simple  story,  idyllic  and  full  of 
meaning.  It  tells  of  the  prophet  Samuel's  visit  to 
Bethlehem,  his  passing  in  review  the  stalwart  sons 
of  Jesse,  his  sending  for  the  youngest  boy  David 
from  the  mountain  pastures  where  he  keeps  his 
sheep.  And  when  the  youth  comes  in,  fresh  and 
ruddy  from  the  free  air  of  the  uplands,  wondering 
why  he  is  sent  for,  awed  at  sight  of  the  venerable 
prophet,  amazed  at  the  pouring  of  the  oil  upon  his 
head  as  a  sign  that  God  has  chosen  him  to  special 
service,  the  child's  love  for  the  shepherd  boy  be- 


Romance  Stories  233 

comes  a  part  of  his  life.  For  the  child  of  seven  or 
eight  is  the  story  of  the  slaying  of  Goliath,  the 
giant  champion,  with  its  deeply  religious  spirit, 
the  zealous  loyalty  for  God,  whose  armies  the 
unbeliever  has  defied,  the  unquestioning  trust  in 
God  which  leads  David  to  dare  all  upon  his  skill 
with  his  familiar  weapon,  the  sling  and  stone.  No 
doubt  he  has  often  amused  himself  with  it,  often 
engaged  in  contests  of  skill  with  his  young  com- 
panions, sometimes  even  saved  himself  and  his 
flock  with  it,  from  the  peril  of  wild  beasts.  The 
deep  religious  meaning  of  David's  conquest  over 
the  giant  will  not  pass  out  of  the  boy's  mind  as 
in  later  years  he  delights  in  the  chivalric  romance 
of  David's  later  life. 

The  episode  of  the  slaying  of  the  giant,  how- 
ever, affords  an  opportunity  for  that  method  of 
more  particular  study  to  which  the  older  boys 
and  girls  are  accustomed.  It  may  be  used  to 
introduce  them,  with  more  detail  than  the  earlier 
stories  allowed,  to  the  topography  of  Palestine, 
the  Fifth  Gospel,  as  Dr.  Thompson  truly  called 
it.  Some  day  when  the  children  have  come  to 
be  nine  and  eleven  years  old,  and  know  by  heart 
the  story  of  David  and  Goliath,  let  them  bring 
their  Bibles  to  the  table  on  which  the  relief  map 
has  been  laid,  while  the  mother  shows  them  pre- 
cisely how  it  came  to  pass  that  this  decision  of 


234  Telling  Bible  Stories 

the  quarrel  by  single  combat,  so  common  in  days 
of  chivalry,  took  place  between  the  Philistines 
and  the  Israelites.  Let  her  show  them  how  the 
Philistines  dwelt  in  the  maritime  plain,  and  the 
Israelites  on  the  high  tableland,  with  its  over- 
shadowing hills.  Let  them  find  the  vale  of  Elah, 
up  which  the  Philistine  army  swarmed  with  their 
archers  and  spearmen  and  their  war  chariots.  Let 
them  trace  their  progress  till  they  reach  the  three- 
cornered  plain  of  Shocoh,  shut  in  on  all  sides  by 
hills.  Upon  one  of  these  hills  the  army  of  Israel 
was  intrenched  among  the  bushes  ;  and  the  chil- 
dren will  see  that  the  Philistines  must  have  taken 
up  their  position  on  the  opposite  hill  with  their 
war  chariots  on  the  little  plain  below.  It  will  be 
easy  for  them,  studying  this  ground,  to  under- 
stand why  there  was  no  battle.  For  from  the 
heights  above  came  down  two  brooks  and  flowed 
along  the  foot  of  each  of  the  hills  on  which  the 
two  armies  were  intrenched,  uniting  at  the  western 
corner  of  Shocoh  to  flow  away  down  the  valley  of 
Elah.  Either  army,  therefore,  before  attacking 
the  other,  must  ford  a  brook,  cross  the  plain, 
exposed  to  the  darts  and  arrows,  of  the  enemy, 
not  to  speak  of  the  attack  of  the  chariots ;  then 
cross  another  brook  and  climb  a  hill,  while  the 
enemy  safe  above  could  shower  their  missiles 
upon  them  from  behind  the  trees  without  risk 


Romance  Stories  235 

to  themselves.1  This  clearly  explains  the  deter- 
mination of  the  Philistines  to  bring  the  Israelites 
into  the  open  plain  ;  for  Israel  had  no  chariots, 
and  the  chariots  of  the  Philistines  could  do  noth- 
ing on  the  hills.  And  so  day  by  day  the  giant 
champion  strode  across  the  plain,  hurling  defiance 
at  them  and  their  God,  in  the  hope  of  goading 
them  to  such  exasperation  that  they  would  rush 
down  from  their  intrenchment  to  be  mown  down 
by  the  sharp  scythes  of  the  chariots.  He  never 
dreamed  that  his  boastful  challenge  to  single  com- 
bat would  be  taken  up. 

But  not  far  away,  on  the  hills  above,  toward 
Bethlehem,  there  is  a  shepherd  boy  seated  in  the 
midst  of  his  flock,  under  the  silvery  olive  trees. 
Now  he  is  singing  to  his  rude  guitar,  and  anon 
springing  up  to  practise  with  the  sling  that  is  the 
protection  of  his  flock  from  the  lion  and  the  bear. 
His  father  sends  for  him  to  carry  a  message  and  a 
gift  to  his  older  brothers  in  the  army,  and  so  over 
the  fields  and  down  the  hillside  he  comes,  and 
brave  in  his  unquestioning  faith  in  God,  takes  up 
the  giant's  challenge,  and  becomes  the  champion 
and  the  liberator  of  his  people. 

Such   a  lesson   in   topography   will   make   the 

1  At  the  present  day  there  is  water  in  these  brooks  only  after 
the  winter  rains  and  snows.  The  gradual  disappearance  of  the 
forests  has  dried  up  most  of  the  streams  of  Palestine. 


236  Telling  Bible  Stories 

whole  Bible  more  real,  and  awaken  in  the  children 
a  zest  and  an  intelligent  appreciation  which  will 
give  them  a  new  idea  of  the  joy  of  study.  They 
are  old  enough  now,  or  soon  will  be,  for  the  rest 
of  the  story  of  David's  life,  and  the  mother  who 
has  taught  them  thus  far  by  Bible  stories  will 
not  find  it  necessary  to  slur  over  the  fact  which, 
if  their  minds  are  as  alert  as  they  should  be,  they 
will  soon  discover  for  themselves,  that  this  story 
is  another  of  those  instances  where  the  inspired 
author  has  made  up  his  narrative  from  two  old 
legends. 

No  story  in  all  the  Bible  is  so  perfect  a  tale 
of  romance  as  this.  The  turn  that  the  victory 
over  the  giant  gives  to  young  David's  fortunes  is 
most  romantic :  the  favor  of  the  king,  the  love  of 
the  king's  son  Jonathan,  and  the  beginning  of  a 
friendship  that  all  history  reveres  as  passing  the 
love  of  women ;  the  love  of  the  king's  daughter 
Michal,  and  David's  marriage  with  her  as  the 
reward  of  deeds  of  prowess  ;  the  generalship  of 
the  king's  army,  the  enthusiastic  admiration  of 
the  populace,  the  secretly  growing  jealousy  of  the 
king  leading  to  attempts  at  David's  life,  his  re- 
peated escapes  and  finally  his  abandonment  of  the 
court,  and  his  last  parting  with  his  friend,  —  a 
scene  almost  unmatched  for  pathos  and  poetry. 
Then  comes  the  wild  outlaw  life,  David  and  his 


Romance  Stories  237 

band  of  hardy  young  followers  roaming  amidst 
the  rifts  and  rocks  of  Jeshimon,  the  Negeb 
deserts,  as  brave  and  gallant  as  Robin  Hood  and 
his  archers  in  Sherwood  forest,  now  protecting 
the  rich  farmers  and  drovers  of  the  oases  from 
the  depredations  of  robber  bands  that  haunted  the 
desert,  now  nobly  sparing  the  life  of  the  king 
who  is  roaming  these  wilds  seeking  David's  life. 


VII 

2  Samuel  ii.— x;  xxiii.  8—39;  xv;  xviii. 

The  story  of  the  consolidation  of  David's  king- 
dom after  the  death  of  Saul  and  Jonathan,  his 
many  wars  and  brilliant  victories,  his  twice  thirty 
worthies  and  their  splendid  deeds,  reads  more 
than  ever  like  the  old  romances  of  chivalry.  And 
what  episode  in  ancient  romance  so  deeply  stirs 
the  imagination,  as  the  rebellion  of  Absalom,  that 
best-beloved  son  of  the  aged  king  ?  What  scene 
is  more  romantic  than  that  when  the  royal  war- 
rior, who  has  many  a  time  ridden  forth  to  victory, 
passes  out  from  the  gate  of  Jerusalem  with 
shrouded  head  and  unsandalled  feet,  taking  his 
sad  way  to  "  the  Farm-House,"  where  his  faithful 
thirty  and  their  followers  meet  him,  and  accom- 
pany him  across  the  deep  flowing  Kidron  and 


238  Telling  Bible  Stories 

over  the  Mount  of  Olives,  to  his  sorrowful  exile 
beyond  Jordan  ?  And  what  lament  of  all  litera- 
ture stirs  the  fountain  of  our  tears  like  that 
with  which  he  meets  the  news  of  victory  :  "  O 
my  son  Absalom !  my  son,  my  son  Absalom ! 
Would  God  I  had  died  for  thee,  O  Absalom,  my 
son,  my  son  !  " 

The  children  have  followed  all  these  events 
upon  the  relief  map.  One  incident  in  this  life  of 
adventure  and  success  it  has  made  particularly 
interesting.  It  is  the  story  which  so  nearly  re- 
sembles the  romance  of  Robin  Hood  which  they 
have  read  and  reread  with  such  delight,  the 
story  how  the  Robin  Hood  of  Israel  won  his  Maid 
Marian.1  The  scene  of  it  is  that  rocky  desert  of 
the  south  where  Hagar  once  wandered,  and  to 
which,  after  he  had  become  King  Saul's  friend, 
and  then  had  incurred  the  king's  jealous  sus- 
picion, David  took  refuge  with  his  gallant  six 
hundred.  The  time  is  the  spring  sheep-shearing, 
always  celebrated  by  a  great  feast.  Tell  the 
children  how  the  flocks  came  streaming  in  from 
all  directions  led  by  their  shepherds,  picture  the 
gathering  together  of  stores  of  food,  the  festal 
preparations  superintended  by  a  young  woman  of 
good  understanding  and  beautiful  countenance, 
the  farmer's  wife  Abigail.  Show  them  now  the 
USam.  xxv.  P-42. 


Romance  Stories  239 

company  of  youths  of  free  and  martial  bearing 
coming  up  from  .the  desert  —  they  are  David's 
companions  bringing  greetings  from  their  chief, 
and  the  request  that  on  this  festal  occasion  the 
farmer  will  remember  how  they  have  protected 
his  flocks  and  will  send  them,  according  to  custom, 
a  share  of  the  good  things.  Read  them  Nabal's 
rough  reply  which  proved  him  not  only  a  churl 
but  a  fool,  for  he  could  ill  afford  to  offend  neigh- 
bors who  were  so  useful  and  so  dauntless.  Picture 
the  wrath  of  David  on  receiving  the  curt  and  in- 
sulting message ;  then  show  them  the  six  hundred 
men  advancing  across  the  desert  with  their  long, 
swinging  stride.  They  reach  one  of  the  deep 
valley  clefts  that  add  to  the  difficulties  of  this 
region,  and  as  they  are  going  down  the  cliff  path 
on  one  side  they  see  a  strange  procession  coming 
down  on  the  other  —  a  little  company  of  men  with 
pack  asses,  and  behind  them  a  woman  who  rides 
with  an  air  of  command.  The  children  are  not 
too  young  to  appreciate  the  dignified,  appropriate, 
and  winning  words  which  Abigail  addressed  to 
David  when  the  two  companies  met,  the  loyalty 
of  the  wife,  the  fearlessness  of  the  woman,  who, 
though  in  danger,  is  mistress  of  the  situation,  able 
to  remind  the  freebooting  chieftain  how  unworthy 
of  him  it  would  be  to  avenge  himself  with  his  own 
hand.  It  will  not  be  hard  for  them  to  appreciate 


240  Telling  Bible  titories 

the  discretion  and  tact  of  a  woman  entirely  mis- 
tress of  herself  and  perspicacious  as  to  the  charac- 
ter of  him  to  whom  her  plea  was  addressed,  in  her 
promise  that  when  at  last  better  days  should  have 
dawned  —  David's  soul  bound  in  the  bundle  of 
life  with  Jehovah,  and  the  souls  of  his  enemies 
slung  out  by  God  as  from  the  hollow  of  a  sling, 
as  he  had  once  slung  a  stone  on  the  battle-field  of 
Shocoh,  he  would  not  then  be  sorry  that  he  had 
not  shed  blood  causeless.  They  will  understand 
that  such  a  plea  from  such  a  woman  would  win 
the  heart  of  David,  that  he  would  give  up  his 
purpose  of  revenge  and  retire  to  the  wilderness. 
And  it  will  seem  perfectly  natural  to  them  that 
when  ten  days  later  Nabal  died  and  the  beautiful 
Abigail  was  left  unprotected  on  that  frontier  farm, 
exposed  to  marauding  robber  bands,  David  should 
send  for  her  and  she  should  consent  to  be  his  wife. 
It  is  just  the  kind  of  love  story,  all  chivalry  and  no 
sentiment,  which  the  growing  children  can  enjoy, 
while  the  religious  tone  implied  and  explicit  in  Abi- 
gail's noble  speech  and  David's  self-control  raises 
it  to  the  high  level  of  the  best  tales  of  chivalry. 

Not  always  is  the  chief  of  a  guerilla  band,  how- 
ever valiant  and  chivalrous,  competent  to  lead 
great  armies  and  conduct  warfare  on  a  large 
scale.  David  had  been  a  bold,  brave,  and  ever 
successful  guerilla  leader  in  the  days  of  his  out- 


Romance  Stories  241 

lawry,  but  he  had  also  the  large  grasp  of  situations 
and  the  genius  for  command  which  made  of  him 
a  great  general.  And  so  the  story  of  his  life  has 
its  further  interest  for  the  older  children  who 
have  learned  to  study  history;  and  no  study  of  any 
life,  save  the  matchless  life  which  is  at  once  the 
model  and  the  hope  of  man,  is  more  worthy  of  the 
study  of  boys  of  fifteen  and  upward.  Not  that 
David  was  a  perfect  man.  Let  not  the  children 
be  misled  by  the  ancient  meaning  of  a  word,  to 
suppose  that  because  he  was  "  a  man  after  God's 
own  heart,"  therefore  he  was  in  every  respect  well 
pleasing  to  God.  The  word  heart  here  means 
purpose,  as  it  still  does  when  one  answers  to  a 
request,  "with  all  my  heart."  David  was  a  man 
of  strong  character,  wonderfully  attractive,  brave, 
generous,  and  lovable,  a  warrior  and  organizer 
"  after  God's  own  heart,"  to  forward  his  purpose, 
to  bring  Israel  to  the  position  he  had  designed  for 
her ;  and  for  this  work  David's  marvellous  faculty 
of  leadership  admirably  fitted  him.  But  he  was  a 
man  of  many  and  grave  faults,  bloodthirsty,  cruel, 
unscrupulous  to  attain  his  ends,  and  often  selfishly 
indifferent  to  consequences.  Many  of  his  trials 
he  brought  upon  himself.  His  faults  were  largely 
the  faults  of  his  time  and  his  position,  and  com- 
pared with  other  Eastern  monarchs,  compared 
with  many  heroes  of  Eastern  chivalry,  even 


Telling  Bible  Storiet 

David  stands  on  a  high  plane.  It  will  do  no  boy 
harm,  it  ought  to  do  him  great  good,  to  study 
David's  character  just  as  it  is  presented  in  the 
Bible,  with  all  its  faults  and  all  its  crimes. 

David  was  a  man  of  wondrous  charm,  able  to 
inspire  boundless  affection.  Saul  loved  him  at 
first  sight,  and  only  fierce  and  not  ill-founded 
jealousy  overcame  his  love.  Jonathan  loved  him 
as  few  friends  love  :  to  his  warriors  he  was  "  the 
lamp  of  Israel,"  his  three  mighty  men  adored 
him,  and  were  ready  to  pour  out  their  lives  for 
his  sake  as  he  poured  out  before  God  the  water 
from  the  well  of  Bethlehem  which  one  of  them 
had  risked  his  life  to  procure.  More  even  than 
his  bravery,  his  patriotism,  his  personal  charm,  it 
was  his  genuinely  religious  character  that  gave 
his  people  that  impression  of  him  which  lived  in 
the  nation's  memory.  He  never  fought  for  glory 
nor  for  selfish  ends;  his  were  the  wars  of  the 
Lord,  his  kingdom  was  exalted  for  Israel's  sake. 
He  always  worked  in  harmony  with  the  prophets ; 
that  God-consciousness  which  marks  the  Hebrew 
saints  was  his  to  a  remarkable  degree.  He  was 
magnanimous  to  his  enemies,  especially  to  Saul. 
What  more  thrilling  episode  do  we  find  in  ro- 
mance than  that  wild  night  walk  of  David  and  his 
cousin  Abishai  across  the  wilderness  of  Ziph1  to 
1 1  Sam.  xxvi. 


Romance  Stories  243 

prove  to  Saul,  asleep  in  his  tent,  that  though  in 
David's  power  he  was  safe?  Capable  of  deep  and 
genuine  repentance,  he  had  that  faith  in  God 
which  kept  him  from  despair  after  heinous  sin. 
For  all  these  reasons,  a  study  of  his  life  and  char- 
acter may  be  made  as  valuable  as  interesting  to 
boys  in  their  youth.  Samuel  and  David,  though 
so  different  in  other  respects,  were  alike  in  this ; 
both  were  called  to  God's  service  in  early  youth, 
and  both  owed  the  usefulness  of  their  later  life  to 
the  simplicity  and  fidelity  with  which  they  obeyed 
the  call. 

VIII 

1  Kings  xvii.— xix. ;  2  Kings  i.— ii.  15 

Elijah  was  a  man  of  another  sort,  yet  much  of 
the  wild  romance  of  chivalry  clings  to  him.  His 
story  contains  much  for  the  little  children ;  it  is 
a  true  folk  tale,  not  only  in  feeling,  but  in  form. 
The  mother  who  reads  the  story  of  Elijah  with 
open  mind,  with  the  memories  of  childhood  incar- 
nated in  her  children,  will  see  that  the  inspired 
writer  of  this  story,  with  true  genius,  incorporated 
into  his  narrative  almost  without  change  a  genuine 
folk  tale,  which  had  been  handed  down  by  word 
of  mouth  for  several  generations.  The  perspicac- 
ity, the  inspiration,  of  this  late  author,  who  wiote, 


244  Telling  Bible  Stories 

it  will  be  observed,  during  the  captivity,  which 
event  the  book  of  Kings  narrates,  is  nowhere  more 
strikingly  shown  than  in  his  choosing  the  materials 
for  the  greater  part  of  the  Elijah  story,  not  from 
the  annals  of  the  kingdom,  to  which  he  so  often 
refers  in  other  parts  of  his  book,  but  from  the  lips 
of  the  people.  For  it  will  be  remembered  that 
from  first  to  last  Elijah  was  in  opposition,  the 
"enemy,"  as  King  Ahab  said,  of  the  established 
order,  which  was  idolatrous  and  iniquitous. 
Without  a  shadow  of  doubt  his  story  was  garbled 
in  the  royal  annals,  after  the  custom  of  Eastern 
annalists.  The  writer  of  the  book  of  Kings  recog- 
nized this,  and  went  for  his  material  to  the  homes 
of  the  people,  perfectly  sure  that  however  much 
the  story  might  have  been  idealized  in  passing 
down  from  lip  to  lip  through  two  hundred  years, 
it  had  still  by  that  very  process  been  kept  essen- 
tially true.  The  chapter  that  tells  the  story  of 
Elijah's  translation  has  the  very  form  of  the  oldest 
folk-lore  with  its  repetitions.  Three  times  Elijah 
tells  Elisha,  "  Tarry  here,  I  pray  thee,  for  Jehovah 
hath  sent  me  to  Bethel  —  to  Jericho  —  to  Jordan." 
Three  times  Elisha  answers,  "  As  Jehovah  liveth 
and  as  thy  soul  liveth  I  will  not  leave  thee." 
Twice  the  sons  of  the  prophets  say  to  Elisha, 
"  Knowest  thou  that  Jehovah  will  take  away 
thy  master  from  thy  head  to-day  ?  "  And  twice 


Romance  Stories  245 

he  answers,  "Yea,  I  also  know  it,  hold  ye  your 
peace."  A  story  couched  in  this  form  is  espe- 
cially delightful  to  the  little  child,  and  there  is  a 
very  cogent  reason  why  this  chapter,  and  the  story 
of  Elijah's  raising  the  widow's  son,  and  other  won- 
der stories  of  his  life,  should  be  told  to  the  children 
while  they  are  young.  I  have  already  alluded  to 
it,  the  importance  of  making  children  familiar  with 
miracle  stories  before  they  go  to  school,  and  study 
those  truths  of  science  which  seem  to  say  that 
miracles  are  impossible,  only  because  the  real  pur- 
port and  significance  of  miracles  is  not  recognized 
by  text-book  or  teacher. 

For  the  older  children  this  true  romance  tale  is 
full  of  historic  and  religious  as  well  as  of  literary 
interest.  Elijah  was  a  heroic  servant  of  God,  of 
the  rugged,  stern,  enthusiastic  type  of  the  Scottish 
Covenanters  and  the  French  Camisards.  He  was 
impassioned  with  the  thought  of  the  glory  of 
God  ;  he  knew  no  hindrance  in  his  effort  to  estab- 
lish the  reign  of  Jehovah.  He  had  the  moral  ups 
and  downs  of  the  enthusiast,  dauntless  courage 
alternated  with  fits  of  deep  depression ;  but  in  his 
deepest  discouragement,  when  even  faith  failed 
him,  the  same  consuming  ardor  burned  within 
him.  Like  Him  to  whom  he  appeared  on  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration,  the  zeal  of  the  Lord's 
house  was  devouring  him.  He  knew  the  secret 


246  Telling  Bible  Stories 

of  communion  with  God  as  few  knew  it  before 
Christ.  "  Cold  mountains  and  the  midnight  air  " 
knew  "  the  fervor  of  his  prayer,"  as  they  knew 
that  of  the  Saviour  of  men. 

Elijah  was  a  man  of  the  open  air,  and  this  is 
one  of  the  best  of  stories  to  give  children  the 
nature  consciousness  of  the  Bible.  This  "  prophet 
of  the  uncultured  steppe  "  was  in  strange  contrast 
with  the  luxury  of  Ahab's  court,  where  he  was  so 
well  known.  He  came  from  the  wild  deserts  of 
the  east,  —  not  the  rocky  desolation  of  the  Negeb 
with  which  the  children  are  well  acquainted, — and 
his  whole  story  reveals  his  strong  love  for  moun- 
tains :  Horeb,  and  that  Carmel  where  by  prefer- 
ence he  lived,  with  its  bold  headland  jutting  out 
into  the  limitless  sea,  and  its  wide  sweep  of  splen- 
did inland  prospect  —  the  river  Kishon  where 
Sisera's  host  perished,  the  "  circle  of  Galilee " 
with  its  blue  lake,  Tabor  and  far-distant,  snow- 
capped Hermon,  and  nearer  the  great  plain  of 
Esdraelon,  with  Mount  Megiddo  where  King  Jo- 
siah  was  slain,  that  battle-field  of  the  nations 
which  the  seer  of  the  Apocalypse  saw  as  Arma- 
geddon, Har-Megiddo,  the  last  battle-field  of  the 
world.  The  relief  map  will  do  good  service  in 
the  growing  children's  study  of  this  story. 

For  the  older  boys  and  girls  is  the  study  of  that 
heroic  struggle  against  Baal  worship  which  was 


Romance  Stories  247 

the  ruling  passion  of  Elijah's  life,  and  his  pro- 
found discovery  of  the  nature  of  communion  with 
God.  More  clearly  than  any  who  had  preceded 
him  he  perceived  the  moral  nature  of  God,  and  it 
was  this  perception  of  the  necessity  of  righteous- 
ness and  justice  as  the  condition  of  the  divine 
blessing,  which  made  him  such  a  power  in  the 
nation.  His  relations  with  the  court,  his  contest 
with  the  priests  of  Baal,  the  various  exiles  by 
which  alone  his  life  was  saved,  his  long,  lonely 
flight  to  the  desert  of  Horeb  where  hundreds  of 
years  before  God  had  walked  among  his  people  in 
cloud  and  fire,  his  tremendous  experiences  upon 
the  rock  where  dauntlessly  he  braved  tempest  and 
whirlwind  and  fire  in  the  daring  desire  to  behold 
God,  the  revelation  that  came  to  him  in  the  still 
small  voice  ;  his  share,  through  the  medium  of 
his  disciple,  Elisha,  in  overturning  the  reigning 
dynasty,  gone  rotten  with  effeminacy  and  Baal 
worship  and  the  dominance  of  an  unscrupulous 
woman,  and  raising  up  a  new  dynasty  with  a  re- 
former zealous  for  Jehovah  at  its  head  ;  his  part 
in  policies  beyond  the  kingdom,  in  Syria  where 
the  general  Hazael  was  intriguing  against  his 
king  ;  and  finally  the  fiery  blaze  of  his  intense 
life  which  no  opposition  could  extinguish,  not 
quenched  but  embraced  in  the  glow  of  the  fiery 
chariot  —  what  romantic  story  of  all  literature 


248  Telling  Bible  Stories 

can  surpass  this  ?  I  am  sorry  for  the  young  peo- 
ple, and  sorry  for  the  mother,  who  cannot  find 
material  for  many  a  thrilling  Sunday  afternoon  in 
studying  together,  in  all  the  illumination  of  their 
literary  and  historic  knowledge,  the  story  of  this 
great  reformer  of  Israel. 


IX 

2  Kings  xi.  1—16 

With  the  story  of  the  little  king  Joash  we  leave 
the  realm  of  romance  and  enter  upon  sober  his- 
tory. It  is  an  admirable  introduction,  for  it  is  as 
dramatic  and  as  stimulating  to  the  imagination 
as  a  play  of  Shakespeare.  The  little  children  will 
love  the  story  of  the  baby  king,  hidden  by  his  big 
sister  in  the  very  temple,  while  his  wicked  grand- 
mother was  killing  all  the  other  princes  that  she 
might  be  queen  herself ;  and  how  he  lived  hidden 
with  his  nurse  in  the  temple  until  he  was  seven 
years  old,  and  how  at  the  end  of  that  time  his 
sister's  husband,  the  high  priest,  dethroned  his 
grandmother  and  made  him  king.  The  growing 
children  will  find  much  to  add  to  this  story  and 
much  to  fill  its  outline,  and  will  make  the  delight- 
ful discovery  that  the  relief  map  solves  some  dif- 
ficulties in  the  early  part  of  the  narrative.  The 


Romance  Stories  249 

grown  children  will  be  interested  in  studying,  not 
only  the  dramatic  possibilities  of  which  the  great 
French  poet  Racine  made  such  splendid  use  in  his 
noble  tragedy,  "  Athalie,"  but  also  the  interesting 
political  history  which  involved  the  kingdom  of 
Judah  with  the  drastic  reforms  of  Jehu  in  Israel. 
The  religious  element  is  not  so  clear  in  this,  or  in 
any  of  the  historic  stories,  as  in  the  romance  tales 
which  precede  them  ;  yet  the  teaching  of  an  over- 
ruling providence,  and  the  sense  of  the  high  place 
of  the  kingdom  of  Judah,  in  the  plan  of  God,  are 
strikingly  clear  in  this  history  of  the  reign  of 
Joash. 


CHAPTER  IX 
PURPOSE  STORIES 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD  says  that  the  literature  of 
every  people  grows  from  folk-lore  to  philosophy, 
from  the  imaginative  and  concrete  to  the  scientific 
and  abstract.  The  mother  who  has  been  telling 
her  children  Bible  stories  after  the  graded  system 
suggested  and  partly  outlined  in  these  chapters 
needs  not  to  be  told,  for  experience  with  her  chil- 
dren has  taught  her,  that  although  it  is  quite  con- 
ceivable that  God  could  have  given  to  the  world 
a  Bible,  a  volume  of  inspired  Scriptures,  of  an 
entirely  different  character,  not  following  the 
analogy  of  other  literatures,  standing  from  the 
first  upon  the  plane  of  the  scientific  and  the  ab- 
stract as  to  historic  accuracy  and  theological 
truth,  it  would  have  been  useless,  for  no  primitive 
or  half -cultured  people  could  have  understood  it, 
any  more  than  could  the  children  of  to-day. 

Thus  far  we  have  studied  the  story  lore  of  the 
Old  Testament  in  its  sequence  as  it  stands  in  the 
Bible,  and  have  found  its  development  accurately 

250 


Purpose  Stories  251 

corresponding  with  the  historic  development  of 
literature  everywhere.  Its  earliest  stories  are 
based  upon  myth,  its  patriarch  stories  upon  le- 
gend. Later  the  legendary  stories  take  the  more 
elaborate  character  of  epic,  and  they  are  followed 
by  romance  shading  off  into  history.  The  next 
step  in  the  order  of  literary  as  of  intellectual  de- 
velopment is  philosophy,  and  the  analogy  thus  far 
followed  would  lead  us  to  look  for  philosophical 
literature  in  the  Old  Testament.  In  fact,  it  con- 
tains much,  not  only  in  what  is  commonly  called 
the  Wisdom  literature  (Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  and 
Job),  but  conspicuously  and  most  uniquely  in  the 
prophetic  writings,  which  stand  alone  in  literature 
as  a  form  of  philosophy.  Singularly  enough,  how- 
ever, these  two  classes  do  not  exhaust  the  philo- 
sophical literature  of  the  Old  Testament ;  it  appears 
again  in  that  very  modern  form,  the  purpose  story. 
Certain  philosophers  of  Israel  found  a  way  to 
bring  their  high  thoughts  to  the  comprehension 
of  the  people  in  precisely  the  form  which  makes 
them  comprehensible  to  the  young  people  of  to- 
day. 

Though  a  good  deal  has  of  late  been  said 
against  the  purpose  story  as  a  form  of  art,  it  is 
certainly,  when  effectively  written,  an  excellent 
means  of  accomplishing  its  end.  The  late  Mr. 
Shorthouse,  justifying  his  use  of  the  method  in 


252  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

"John  Inglesant,"  said  that  if  James  Hinton  had 
written  his  marvellous  philosophical  study  of 
"  The  Mystery  of  Pain  "  in  the  form  of  a  novel, 
it  would  have  brought  illumination  to  hundreds 
for  every  one  which  his  matchless  little  book  has 
reached.  The  purpose  stories  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  effectively  written.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  find  any  others  which  more  perfectly  meet  their 
writer's  purpose.  They  are  Ruth,  Jonah,  Esther, 
and  the  story  part  of  Job  ;  and  although  three  of 
these  are  commonly  ranked  with  history  and  the 
fourth  with  prophecy,  yet  for  practical  purposes 
every  mother  has  included  them  in  the  story  lore 
of  the  Old  Testament.  And  the  mothers  are 
right. 

The  purpose  story  may  be  founded  upon  his- 
toric incidents,  as  "  John  Inglesant "  is,  or,  like 
Mrs.  Ward's  "  Robert  Elsmere  "  and  Charles  Dud- 
ley Warner's  "  Golden  House,"  it  may  not.  The 
author  may  treat  history  with  absolute  freedom, 
bending  facts  to  suit  the  purpose  of  the  story,  as 
Mr.  Shorthouse  does  in  "  John  Inglesant,"  or  he 
may  endeavor  to  remain  faithful  to  history,  like 
Dickens  in  his  "Tale  of  Two  Cities."  But  his- 
toric incident  in  either  case  is  a  mere  convenience, 
to  be  used  so  far  as  it  serves  the  author's  philo- 
sophic purpose,  and  no  farther. 

I  have  mentioned  only  four  Old  Testament  pur- 


Purpose  Stories  253 

pose  stories,  but  in  fact  there  is  a  great  wealth  of 
problem  or  purpose  story  in  the  Old  Testament, 
and  it  is  used,  like  all  its  story  lore,  with  one 
supreme  purpose,  which  commands  the  immediate 
and  more  restricted  purpose  of  each  ;  namely,  to 
develop  religious  truth,  especially  to  bring  man- 
kind by  degrees  to  a  correct  notion  of  God.  The 
body  of  Old  Testament  story  literature,  taken  as  a 
whole,  shows  that  the  intellectual  and  moral  prog- 
ress of  Israel  was  conditioned  in  the  enlargement 
of  their  thought  of  God,  from  the  purely  local 
deity  whose  interest  and  power  are  restricted  to 
the  descendants  of  Abraham,  to  the  God  of  heaven 
and  earth,  who  takes  an  interest  in  all  humanity, 
and  even  in  the  dumb  creatures,  and  who  rules 
over  the  heavenly  hosts. 

It  will  not  appear  singular  to  the  mother  who 
has  been  telling  Bible  stories  along  the  lines  indi- 
cated in  the  preceding  chapters,  that  this  enlarging 
conception  of  God  is  presented  in  a  series  of  stories 
whose  religious  teachings  are  less  fundamental, 
less  universal,  than  those  which  preceded  them. 
This  has  been  the  rule  from  the  beginning.  The 
most  comprehensive  truths  of  all,  truths  of  the 
origin  of  the  universe  and  of  man's  relations  to 
God  and  to  his  fellow-man,  were  revealed  not  in 
history,  as  would  indeed  be  impossible,  but  in 
these  earliest  stories  which  are  not  history  at  all, 


254  Telling  Bible  Stories 

but  the  religious  treatment  of  ancient  myth ;  — 
stories  every  detail  of  which,  unlike  those  that 
come  later,  speaks  as  compellingly  to  the  little 
child  as  to  the  learned  sage,  being  in  fact  better 
adapted  to  win  the  assent  of  the  artless  faith  of 
the  child  than  of  the  trained  intelligence  of  the 
man.  In  these  instances,  as  in  many  others,  the 
little  child  leads,  and  sage  and  scholar  best  fit 
themselves  to  apprehend  sublimest  truth  by  be- 
coming "  as  a  little  child. "  As  the  stories  advance 
from  folk-lore  to  saga,  hero  tale,  romance,  history, 
the  truths  they  teach  become  less  universal,  more 
restricted  in  scope.  And  this  rule  would  lead  us 
to  expect  that  the  four  purpose  stories  I  have 
named  will  be  found  embodying  truths  still  more 
restricted  in  significance  than  those  that  have 
gone  before.  They  were  truths  of  immense  prac- 
tical importance  ;  at  the  time  when  they  were 
taught  to  Israel  in  this  story  form  the  nation 
urgently  needed  these  lessons  ;  and  as  we  study 
them  we  shall  see  that  they  must  have  had  an 
important  influence  upon  the  conduct  as  well  as 
the  character  of  the  Hebrew  people.  Even  now, 
though  their  interest  is  chiefly  historical  and  liter- 
ary, their  teachings  are  of  importance  to  the  chil- 
dren to  whom  they  may  be  told. 

Our  slight  study  of  the  evolution  of  the  story 
literature  of  the  Old  Testament  has  made  very 


Purpose  Stories  255 

clear  that  the  literary  form  in  which  truth  may 
be  embodied  in  no  wise  affects  the  force  of  the 
truth.  It  is,  therefore,  of  no  importance  whether 
these  problem  stories  are  history  or  not.  All  of 
them  probably  have  a  historic  basis,  but  the  pur- 
pose of  their  writers  was  not  to  tell  history.  A 
very  little  reflection  makes  it  clear  that  whether 
or  not  these  four  stories  belong  in  one  literary 
class,  none  of  them  belongs  in  the  same  class  with 
the  history  of  the  kings  of  Israel  and  Judah, 
which  we  find  in  the  book  of  Kings,  or  the  history 
of  the  return  from  exile  in  Ezra.  They  belong, 
as  I  have  suggested,  in  the  class  which  may  be 
comprehensively  called  philosophy.  That  is,  the 
truths  they  embody  are  truths  of  life  and  practice, 
ethical  truths  which  other  nations  —  for  instance, 
Greeks  and  Germans  —  would  treat  abstractly, 
but  which  the  genius  of  the  Hebrew  mind  and  of- 
the  Hebrew  language  alike  urged  the  Hebrews  to 
treat  concretely. 

These  stories  are,  in  fact,  not  more  different 
from  any  form  of  Western  literature  than  they 
are  from  any  other  form  of  Old  Testament  litera- 
ture that  we  have  thus  far  studied.  They  belong 
to  a  very  common  form  of  Eastern  literature,  how- 
ever. The  Jews  call  it  Haggada,  which  means 
doctrinal  or  practical  teaching  based  on  parable 
or  legend.  There  are  various  kinds  of  Haggada 


256  Telling  Bible  Stories 

besides  those  illustrated  in  Ruth,  Jonah,  Esther, 
and  Job  ;  they  belong  to  what  the  Jews  call  Mid- 
rash,  that  is,  the  didactic  treatment  of  sacred  writ- 
ings with  embellishments  for  purposes  of  popular 
instruction,  moral  or  practical.  The  method  of 
telling  Bible  stories  which  I  have  been  describing 
may  be  called  a  sort  of  Midrash.  Very  much  of 
the  theological  controversy  of  the  ages  and  of  the 
present  day  is  due  to  the  fact  which  theologians 
might  have  learned  from  any  Jewish  rabbi,  or 
from  a  study  of  rabbinical  literature  ;  but  quite 
as  effectively  by  critical  study  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  this  fact,  namely,  that  much  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament is  Midrash.  The  Chronicles  are  manifestly 
Midrash,  as  may  be  seen  by  comparing  them  with 
Kings  and  Samuel,  for  the  writer  very  obviously 
has  a  doctrinal  or  didactic  purpose.  Some  of  his 
writings  are  founded  on  earlier  Midrashim.  He 
expressly  says  that  two  of  the  eighteen  authorities 
which  he  quotes  are  Midrash.  The  Authorized 
Version  says  "  story,"  the  margin  says  "  com- 
mentary," which  is  more  nearly  correct ;  the 
Hebrew  says  "Midrash." 

Midrash  is  a  late  development  of  Hebrew  litera- 
ture, later  than  any  of  the  forms  which  we  have 
thus  far  studied.  The  books  of  Chronicles  were 
written  in  the  fourth  century  before  Christ,  as 
some  of  their  lists  of  names  show,  and  there  is 


Purpose  Stories  257 

very  little  Midrash  in  the  Bible,  of  which  the 
dates  can  be  clearly  ascertained,  which  is  much 
earlier  than  this.  After  this  date  there  is  an 
immense  deal  of  Midrash  in  Hebrew  literature. 
Some  of  it,  like  the  stories  of  Susanna  and  Tobit, 
is  in  the  Apocrypha;  much  more  of  it  is  in  the 
rabbinical  writings,  but  some  of  it  is  in  the  Old 
Testament. 

All  this  is  important  to  the  mother  and  the 
teacher,  for  the  way  they  tell  Bible  stories  natu- 
rally depends  upon  how  they  understand  them. 
And  it  is  of  importance  to  the  older  children  who 
already,  through  the  graded  method  of  story-tell- 
ing, have  become  interested  in  the  development 
of  Hebrew  literature.  I  venture  to  hope  that  the 
time  will  soon  come  when  the  study  of  Biblical 
literature  from  this  point  of  view  will  take  its  place 
in  the  college  curriculum  alongside  that  of  Greek 
and  Latin  literature  as  an  exercise  of  immense 
humanizing  value.  That  thorough  restatement 
of  Christian  doctrine  which  will  be  one  of  the 
large  tasks  of  a  coming  generation  will  be  more 
efficient,  and  its  results  more  readily  accepted  by 
the  public,  if  this  study  has  previously  had  a  part 
in  forming  the  mentality  of  that  period. 

There  is  no  more  reason  why  the  Haggadic 
treatment  of  a  historic  incident  should  not  be  in 
the  Bible  than  why  a  poem  should  not  be  there,. 


258  Telling  Bible  Stories 

or  a  parable ;  but  the  intelligent  mother  or  teacher 
does  not  interpret  poem  or  parable  or  Haggada 
as  she  interprets  history. 


II 

Ruth  ii.--v. 

Though  the  story  of  Ruth  stands  in  our  Eng- 
lish Bible  between  Judges  and  Samuel,  and  treats 
of  the  same  period  as  the  first  and  the  early 
chapters  of  the  second,  —  the  turbulent  "days 
when  the  Judges  ruled,"  -  —  it  is  impossible  for  any 
intelligent  reader  to  put  Ruth  in  the  same  literary 
category  as  Judges  or  Samuel.  Judges  is  a  col- 
lection of  hero  tales  ;  1  Samuel  is  like  a  medi- 
aeval romance  of  chivalry,  and  Ruth  is  certainly 
neither.  It  is  a  pure  pastoral,  but  there  are  other 
and  more  important  points  of  difference  than  this. 
Ruth  is  by  no  means  entirely  objective,  like  the 
other  two  books.  It  shows  reflection,  subjectivity, 
and  subjectivity  comes  late  in  literature.  More- 
over, its  author's  evident  delight  in  folk-lore  was 
chiefly  due  to  a  historic  interest ;  he  desired  to 
preserve  a  memory  of  old  customs,  —  the  levirate 
marriage,  the  plucking  off  of  the  shoe,  the  impor- 
tant functions  of  the  elders  sitting  in  the  gate, 
the  primitive  ways  of  wooing,  —  and  interest  in 


Purpose  Stories  259 

folk-lore  and  ancient  customs  from  this  viewpoint 
develops  late  in  the  history  of  any  people.  All 
these  things  tend  to  show  that  Ruth  is  a  sort 
of  Haggada  ;  that  an  old  legend,  keeping  alive 
an  incident  in  the  time  of  the  Judges,  perhaps 
preserved  in  writing,  perhaps  handed  down  orally, 
was  chosen*  by  this  writer  as  the  vehicle  for  a 
teaching  which  in  his  time  was  of  great  impor- 
tance. We  may  defer  asking  what  that  teaching 
was,  and  at  what  time  in  the  nation's  history  it 
was  important,  until  we  come  to  Jonah,  for  that 
book  teaches  an  analogous  truth,  needed  at  the 
same  period.  These  things  are  not  for  the  younger 
children,  though  for  the  older  children  at  the 
present  day  they  have  much  of  value.  For  the 
younger  children  Ruth  is  just  a  lovely  story.  Its 
idyllic  character  is  delightful,  its  nature  con- 
sciousness is  exquisite.  In  construction  it  is  thor- 
oughly artistic.  The  important  fact,  important 
from  more  than  one  point  of  view,  that  this  alien 
girl  is  the  ancestress  of  David,  best  beloved  of  all 
Israel's  kings,  is  kept  back  until  the  very  end. 
It  is  the  very  perfection  of  story-telling.  The 
subject  is  as  beautiful  as  it  is  unusual ;  it  is  the 
infrequent  theme  of  the  mutual  love  and  loyalty 
of  two  women.  In  what  literature  in  the  world, 
except  that  of  Israel,  would  such  a  subject  have 
been  treated  at  that  period?  And  having  been 


260  Telling  Bible  Stories 

thus  treated  in  Israel,  it  was  impossible  that  coarse 
jokes  about  the  mother-in-law,  such  as  even  at 
this  late  day  disgrace  our  own  newspaper  litera- 
ture, should  ever  have  found  a  place  in  the  He- 
brew mind.  In  no  other  work  known  to  early 
literature  has  this  relationship  been  treated  with 
such  dignity  and  pathos. 

Ruth  is  hardly  for  the  tiny  children,  but  it  will 
not  be  difficult  to  make  it  very  real  to  children 
of  eight  or  nine,  and  the  relief  map  will  help  in 
giving  it  a  background.  From  the  Bethlehem 
home,  the  house  of  bread  high  on  the  uplands 
of  Mount  Judah,  Elimelech  and  his  family  were 
driven  by  famine.  They  took  refuge  in  the  fruit- 
ful tableland  of  Moab,  just  across  the  Dead  Sea. 
The  children  will  make  for  themselves  the  picture 
of  the  little  caravan  turning  their  faces  from  the 
high  Bethlehem  moor  to  the  purple  hills  of  Moab, 
travelling  eastward  by  the  road  that  goes  steeply 
down  to  Jericho  in  the  deep  cleft  of  Jordan,  and 
across  the  fords  of  the  river  to  those  foreign  hills. 
Tell  them  how  the  two  sons  married  happily 
in  that  foreign  land,  and  how,  in  the  country  in 
which  they  had  sought  refuge  from  famine,  that 
enemy,  death,  from  which  there  is  no  refuge, 
found  them  in  their  happiness.  Tell  them  how: 
the  father  and  the  two  sons  being  dead,  Naomi 
and  the  two  young  Moabitish  daughters-in-law 


Purpose  Stories  261 

were  left  alone  :  how  Naomi  resolved  to  return  to 
her  old  home,  and  how  Ruth  decided  to  go  with 
her.  It  will  do  the  children  no  harm  to  explain 
to  them  the  true  reason  for  her  decision.  Indeed, 
this  will  be  perhaps  the  most  appropriate  oppor- 
tunity to  open  to  their  minds  the  religious  ideas 
of  those  early  days,  which  a  year  or  two  later  they 
will  find  in  some  of  the  stories  with  which  they  are 
already  familiar.  Ruth's  motive  in  going  home 
with  Naomi  was  simply  that  she  loved  her.  It 
was  piety,  not  toward  God,  but  toward  Naomi 
which  prompted  her  beautiful  words,  "  Thy  God 
my  God."  It  was  in  the  nature  of  religious  belief 
in  Israel  as  elsewhere  at  the  time,  that  going  from 
Moab  to  live  with  Naomi  in  Judah  Ruth  should 
leave  behind  her  the  god  Chemosh,  whom  she  had 
been  brought  up  to  worship,  and  worship  Jehovah. 
The  God  of  the  land  would  be  her  God,  just  as 
Naomi's  people  would  be  her  people.  For  we  can- 
not expect  that  the  men  and  women  of  that  time 
could  have  known  as  much  about  God  as  we  know 
about  Him,  now  that  the  Lord  Jesus  has  come  to 
reveal  Him  to  the  world. 

It  will  be  easy  to  awaken  the  sympathy  of  the 
children  with  the  loneliness  of  the  Moabite  girl  in 
Bethlehem.  A  poet  has  told  us  how  "  she  stood 
in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn,"  and  though  there 
are  no  tears  in  the  Bible  story,  only  brave  self- 


262  Telling  Bible  Stories 

forgetfulness  and  unselfish  love,  it  will  not  be 
amiss  some  day  to  read  the  poem,  after  they  have 
become  familiar  with  the  story.  Their  young 
imaginations  will  vividly  picture  the  brave,  home- 
sick girl  as  she  followed  the  reapers  on  the  hill- 
side fields  of  Boaz,  looking  away  from  time  to 
time  across  the  deep  cleft  of  the  Dead  Sea  to  the 
purple  mountains  of  her  old  Moab  home.  They 
must  often  have  seemed  to  beckon  her  to  leave 
the  woman  to  whom  she  was  bound  only  by  the 
memory  of  her  dead  young  husband  ;  to  leave  the 
narrow  poverty  and  the  arduous  toil  which  only 
love  made  necessary ;  and  the  children  will  all 
the  more  appreciate  how  very  brave  and  very  lov- 
ing Ruth  must  have  been,  since  she  resisted  the 
call  of  her  native  mountains.  Ballad  and  tale 
have  already  made  them  familiar  with  the  pecul- 
iar love  of  a  mountain-bred  people,  like  the  Swiss 
and  the  Highlanders,  for  their  mountains,  and 
of  the  homesickness,  sometimes  even  unto  death, 
from  which  they  suffer  in  a  foreign  land.  Ruth 
endured  just  this,  in  the  very  sight  of  her  moun- 
tains, for  love  of  her  mother-in-law,  Naomi. 

The  mother  hardly  needs  help  in  telling  the 
rest  of  the  lovely  story  —  the  gleaning  with  the 
maidens  in  the  powerful  kinsman's  field,  the  sheaf 
brought  home  to  her  mother-in-law,  the  joyous 
harvest-home  festival,  the  happy  marriage  of  Ruth 


Purpose  Stories  263 

that  followed,  and  the  birth  of  the  little  baby  to 
gladden  the  old  grandmother's  heart.  These  are 
incidents  in  the  story  which  may  safely  be  read  or 
told  to  them  precisely  as  they  stand.  They  will 
take  them  simply,  as,  alas !  the  commentators  have 
not  always  done,  and  will  not  find  the  difficulty 
experienced  by  these  learned  men  in  understand- 
ing it  a  matter  of  course  that  Naomi  should  take 
advantage  of  a  local  custom  to  bring  home  to  the 
prominent  citizen  for  whom  Ruth  worked,  and 
who  was  her  kinsman,  the  fact  of  the  young 
widow's  unprotected  condition  in  those  wild  days 
when  the  Judges  ruled. 

The  story,  penetrated  through  and  through 
with  the  noblest  form  of  filial  love,  is  simply  a 
lovely  story  for  the  younger  children.  There  is 
more  in  it  for  the  older  children,  as  we  shall 
presently  see. 

Ill 

Jonah  i.— iv. 

The  story  of  Jonah  is  a  purpose  story  with  pre- 
cisely the  same  significance  as  that  of  Ruth,  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  conceive  of  the  same  lesson 
being  taught  in  two  more  widely  different  ways. 
Ruth  is  a  sweet  and  lovely  pastoral,  appealing  to 
the  reflective  rather  than  to  the  constructive  imagi 


264  Telling  Bible  Stories 

nation.  Jonah  is  a  wonder  tale,  from  first  to  last  a 
story  of  marvels,  precisely  of  the  kind  we  read  in 
Eastern  story  lore,  even  to  the  insertion  of  a  bit  of 
poetry,  just  as  occurs  in  like  cases  in  the  "  Arabian 
Nights."  In  fact,  not  only  have  various  Eastern 
peoples,  such  as  the  Assyrians  and  Persians,  folk 
tales  in  which  animals  have  a  share  in  the  repent- 
ance of  the  people,  like  those  in  Nineveh,  there  is 
a  Roman  folk  tale  which  closely  resembles  the 
voyage  part  of  the  story. 

Jonah  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  wonder 
tales  for  the  very  little  child,  and  also  of  tremen- 
dous interest  to  the  growing  boy.  The  mother 
can  hardly  err  in  making  much  of  the  storm  at 
sea,  even  —  if  she  have  no  yachting  experience — • 
to  the  point  of  preparing  herself  for  the  story-tell- 
ing by  studying  the  description  of  St.  Paul's  ship- 
wreck in  Conybeare  and  Howson's  "  Life  of  St. 
Paul,"  or  some  classic  description  of  a  storm  in  the 
Eastern  Mediterranean.  For  the  boy  who  will  de- 
light in  the  story  then  told,  and  all  that  follows, 
as  well  as  for  the  older  children,  there  is  the  pro- 
found meaning  of  it  all.  Both  Jonah  and  Ruth 
teach  the  important,  but  at  that  time  almost  un- 
dreamed-of, truth,  that  Israel  does  not  monopolize 
the  interest  of  God.  In  these  stories  we  find  the 
first  foreshadowings  of  the  truth  of  universal 
brotherhood,  which  is  taking  concrete  form  to- 


Purpose  Stories  265 

day  in  trades-unions  and  civic  leagues,  in  "  better- 
ment work,"  and  in  hospitality  to  immigrants,  and 
is  still  forgotten  in  our  treatment  of  the  Chinese, 
and  too  often  in  our  relations  with  the  colored 
folk. 

Nothing  can  be  less  didactic  than  the  way  in 
which  the  lesson  is  taught  in  Ruth,  —  simply  by 
the  beautiful  character  and  conduct  of  an  alien 
girl,  and  by  holding  her  up,  implicitly,  as  the 
ideal  Israelitish  maiden.  Jonah,  on  the  contrary, 
is  above  all  things  didactic.  From  first  to  last 
the  story  is  a  moral  lesson,  enforcing  the  truth 
that  God  does  care  for  others  besides  the  chosen 
race.  But  what  a  marvellous  form  this  almost 
fiercely  didactic  teaching  takes  on  !  The  adven- 
tures of  Sindbad  the  sailor  are  tame  beside  this 
story  of  the  prophet  who  tried  to  run  away  from 
God.  And  the  surprising  thing  about  it  is  that 
it  more  nearly  belongs  with  Sindbad  the  sailor,  as 
to  literary  class,  than  with  those  other  prophets, 
like  Isaiah  and  Zechariah,  who  also  make  use  of 
parable,  or,  like  Hosea,  who  tells  a  life  story  with 
prophetic  purpose.  This  book  is  certainly  not 
within  the  scope  of  the  prophetic  literature, 
although,  as  was  briefly  indicated  in  our  first  chap- 
ter, the  latter  also  contains  a  wealth  of  story  lore. 
It  will  not  be  amiss  here  to  remind  the  mother,  as 
an  important  fact  to  be  held  in  consciousness,  that 


266  Telling  Bible  Stories 

whatever  else  she  may  think  of  Jonah,  it  is  clearly 
not  in  the  literary  class  with  prophets  like  Isaiah 
and  Hosea. 

Now  there  are  two  kinds  of  literature  which 
this  story  suggests,  or  would  suggest  if  it  were 
not  in  the  Bible.  One  is  folk-lore,  pure  and  sim- 
ple, and  the  other  is  myth.  The  old  myth  of  the 
dragon  that  swallowed  the  sun  every  evening  and 
cast  him  up  every  morning  has  appeared  more 
than  once  in  our  Bible  story-telling.  This  myth 
is  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  widely  extended  of 
all  that  are  known  to  us.  Some  of  the  prophets 
make  use  of  it,  though  the  translators,  not  appre- 
hending the  force  of  the  allusion,  have  generally 
left  it  so  obscure  as  to  be  hardly  recognizable. 
But  it  is  not  only  in  myth  that  we  find  the  story 
of  the  restoration  to  life  of  people  or  animals  after 
having  been  swallowed.  Nursery  lore  is  full  of 
it.  The  mother  has  often  told  her  delighted  chil- 
dren the  stories  of  the  wolf  and  the  seven  young 
kids,  of  the  three  little  pigs,  and  of  little  Red 
Ridinghood  and  her  grandmother,  kids  and  pigs 
and  Red  Ridinghood  and  grandmother,  all  restored 
to  life  after  the  wolf  or  the  fox  has  devoured  them. 
The  Hindus  tell  of  Sakhdeva  being  swallowed  by 
a  fish  and  cast  up  again,  precisely  as  in  the  case  of 
Jonah,  and  nearly  every  nation  has  a  similar  folk 
tale.  All  these  stories  are  in  fact  one.  They  are 


Purpose  Stories  267 

all  the  outgrowth  of  the  attempt  of  the  primitive 
mind  to  understand  a  great  mystery,  the  subduing 
of  day  by  night,  the  overcoming  of  the  sun  in  his 
full  strength  by  the  storm  cloud,  and  the  final 
victory  of  the  sun  in  the  returning  day.  The 
immense  difference  between  these  myths  and  folk 
tales  and  Jonah  is  this :  that  in  Jonah  the  old 
wonder  is  brought  to  bear  upon  a  mystery  not  of 
nature  but  of  grace,  and  the  old  myth  is  made  to 
teach  a  religious  truth,  teaching  it  by  one  of  the 
most  exquisite  of  stories,  which  hardly  any  litera- 
ture can  parallel. 

Now  when  the  mother  tells  this  story  to  the 
children,  let  her  not  try  to  improve  on  the  method 
of  the  writer.  Let  her  not  say  that  all  this  really 
happened,  and  try  to  fit  its  various  statements  into 
the  historic  or  the  geographic  facts.  The  relief 
map  has  no  place  in  the  story  of  Jonah.  It  is  im- 
possible to  make  it  tally  with  facts  either  of  history 
or  geography,  and  this  writer  never  expected  that 
any  mother  would  try  to  do  so.  He  supposed  her 
to  be  gifted  with  imagination,  and  he  no  more 
dreamed  that  she  or  any  one  would  try  to  prove 
his  veracity  by  discovering  a  fish  with  a  gullet 
large  enough  to  permit  the  passage  of  a  man,  or  a 
man  gifted  with  respiratory  organs  which  would 
permit  him  to  live  three  days  in  the  interior  of  a 
sea  monster,  than  he  expected  people  to  believe 


268  Telling  Bible  Stories 

that  the  beasts  in  Nineveh  put  on  sackcloth  and 
cried  mightily  to  God  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah.1 
Every  intelligent  person,  every  youngest  child, 
knows  that  they  neither  did  nor  could,  and  that 
eighth  verse  of  the  third  chapter  is  enough,  if 
there  had  been  no  great  fish  and  no  swallowing  of 
Jonah  and  casting  him  up,  to  show  every  mother 
accustomed  to  story-telling,  whose  mind  is  not 
helplessly  bound  in  the  trammels  of  a  mistaken 
theory  of  inspiration,  that  this  story  is  a  pure 
work  of  the  imagination,  as  beautiful  as  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress,"  and  as  true, 

IV 

Before  asking  what  larger  use  the  mother  may 
make  of  this  story  with  the  older  children,  let  me 
try  to  answer  some  questions  that  may  arise  in 
her  mind.  Yes,  the  prophet  Jonah  is  a  real  char- 
acter ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  this 
book  is  not  prophecy.  Jonah  lived  in  the  time  of 
the  second  Jeroboam,  who  was  a  most  brilliant  and 
prosperous  monarch,  the  Solomon  of  the  northern 

1  It  is  a  fact,  however,  and  one  that  has  its  profound  bearing 
on  the  essential  truth  of  this  story,  that  more  than  once  in 
Eastern  history,  and  at  least  once  during  the  reign  of  the 
present  Sultan  of  Turkey,  and  by  his  command,  domestic  cattle 
have  been  clothed  in  sackcloth  and  left  unfed  during  a  national 
fast. 


Purpose  Stories  269 

kingdom.  The  brief  reference  to  Jonah  in  the 
fourteenth  chapter  of  2  Kings  indicates  that  he 
was  a  politician-prophet,  as  Elisha  was  in  an  ear- 
lier period,  for  the  splendid  work  of  Jeroboam  II 
in  raising  up  his  nation  from  the  abject  condi- 
tion into  which  it  had  fallen  under  Jehoahaz,  to 
the  large  prestige  and  power  which  it  enjoyed 
during  his  reign,  was  evidently  greatly  due  to  the 
prophetic  influence  of  Jonah.1  But  of  all  this 
there  is  not  a  word  in  the  book  of  Jonah  ;  not  a 
syllable  in  it  could  have  helped  Jonah's  prophetic 
work ;  and  if  this  were  the  place  for  developing 
the  historic  question,  it  would  be  seen  that  it 
would  have  been  detrimental  to  it. 

One  familiar  with  the  development  of  Hebrew 
literature  as  the  Bible  shows  it,  as  the  foregoing 
pages  have  in  some  degree  indicated  it,  cannot  but 
perceive  that  this  book  is  of  far  later  date  than 
Jeroboam  II,  and  that  it  is  pure  Midrash,  the 
imaginative  use  of  an  old  legend  attributed  to  a 
real  character,  and  thus  used  for  the  purpose  of 
popular  instruction.  When  the  prophet  was  alive 
nothing  could  have  been  less  pertinent  to  the  time 

1 2  Kings  xiv.  25.  He  restored  the  border  of  Israel  from  the 
entering  in  of  Hamath  unto  the  Sea  of  the  Arabah,  according  to 
the  word  of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel,  which  he  spake  by 
the  hand  of  his  servant  Jonah,  the  son  of  Amittai  the  prophet, 
who  was  of  Gath-hepher. 


270  Telling  Bible  Stories 

and  the  necessities  of  the  case  than  the  teaching 
of  universal  brotherhood.  The  business  of  the  na- 
tion at  that  time  was  to  build  itself  strong  and 
compact,  a  separate  people  in  the  midst  of  the 
nations,  to  preserve  a  purer  idea  of  God  than  any 
of  them  had  attained  to.  Israel  at  that  time  had 
no  more,  come  to  the  lesson  of  universal  sympathy 
and  religious  responsibility  than  our  ten-year-old 
boys  have  come  to  international  law.  The  time 
when  the  lesson  was  in  order  is  very  evident  to 
those  who  are  well  read  in  the  Biblical  history  of 
Israel.  The  ninth  and  tenth  chapters  of  Ezra, 
and  the  thirteenth  of  Nehemiah,  show  the  exces- 
sive and  arrogant  exclusiveness  of  the  Jews  after 
their  return  from  exile.  A  reading  of  these  chap- 
ters makes  very  clear  that  the  stories  of  Ruth  and 
of  Jonah  were  written  by  two  men  of  larger  minds 
and  inspired  by  wider  sympathies  than  other  Is- 
raelites of  their  day  possessed,  widely  differing  in 
genius,  but  alike  clear  in  apprehension  of  the  true 
mission  of  Israel  —  to  be  a  blessing  to  all  nations. 
Both  wrote  to  teach  the  same  great  truth,  that 
God  cares  for  Moabites  and  Ninevites,  and  thus 
for  all  peoples,  as  well  as  for  Israel.  One  who 
reads  in  the  tenth  chapter  of  Ezra  of  the  cruelly 
drastic  measures  taken  by  that  leader  to  keep 
Israel  a  separate  people  by  separating  the  men  of 
Israel  from  their  alien  wives,  must  be  impressed 


Purpose  Stories  271 

by  the  fine  artistic  character  as  well  as  moral 
power  of  the  author  of  the  book  of  Ruth.  It  is 
impossible  that  there  should  not  have  been  in 
the  community  —  as  indeed  the  narrative  shows  — 
some  men  of  generous  soul  who  were  revolted  by 
the  unflinching  sternness  of  the  zealous  and  bigoted 
Ezra.  Evidently  one  of  them,  a  man  of  inspired 
genius,  possibly  one  who  had  been  called  by  Ezra 
to  put  away  a  beloved  alien  wife,  recalling  a  his- 
toric incident  in  the  royal  house  of  Israel,  wrote 
the  beautiful  story  in  which  a  Moabitish  damsel 
—  no  more  a  Jewess  than  those  weeping  "  women 
of  the  land  "  who  with  their  children  were  being 
so  inexorably  "  put  away  "  —  displayed  the  loveli- 
est of  virtues  and  attained  to  the  high  honor  of 
being  an  ancestress  of  David's  royal  line.  Not 
until  this  very  time  would  the  idea  of  combating 
the  national  exclusiveness  have  been  likely  to 
occur  to  any  Jewish  philosopher.  And  assuredly 
it  was  a  philosopher,  and  a  man  of  letters,  not  a 
priest  nor  an  annalist,  who  perceived  that  this  was 
the  best  way  to  combat  it.  What  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  was  to  the  Southern  slaves,  that  in  its  de- 
gree was  Ruth  to  the  aliens  who  were  living  among 
the  returned  Israelites. 

Evidently  Ruth  is  based  upon  a  historic  inci- 
dent; was  Jonah?  Is  it  too  much  to  say  that 
to  connect  it,  however  slightly,  with  history,  is 


272  Telling  Bible  Stories 

absurd  ?  Not  the  story  of  the  great  fish  merely 
—  far  too  much  stress  Has  been  laid  upon  that 
incident,  and  it  is  by  no  means  the  only  impos- 
sible incident  in  the  narrative.  There  is  quite  as 
much  that  is  difficult  to  believe  in  the  story  of 
the  gourd  as  in  that  of  the  fish,  quite  as  much  in 
the  story  of  the  storm  as  in  either,  quite  as  much 
in  the  story  of  the  repentance  of  the  Ninevites  as 
in  any  of  the  others,  though  the  difficulties  dif- 
fer in  character.  But  aside  from  these  difficulties 
there  is  a  historic  impossibility.  Not  only  is 
such  a  missionary  journey  as  that  of  Jonah  un- 
heard of  in  Hebrew  history,  it  could  not  have 
been  undertaken  in  the  time  when  Jonah  actually 
lived,  about  750  B.C.  The  political  conditions  in 
both  countries  forbade.  The  reason  for  finding 
Jonah  to  be  a  "  purpose  story "  is  distinctly  not 
that  "  miracles  do  not  happen "  ;  if  there  were 
not  a  miracle  in  the  story,  it  would  still  be  his- 
torically impossible.  But  as  a  purpose  story,  a 
longer  parable,  what  a  marvellous  work  of  inspired 
genius  it  is,  and  how  wonderfully  adapted  to  meet 
the  spiritual  and  ethical  need  of  the  time  ! 

Jonah  is  a  symbol  of  the  Jewish  people  ;  the 
great  sea  monster,  more  properly,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  dragon,  stands  for  Babylon.  Let  the 
older  children  read  the  fifty-first  chapter  of  Jere- 
miah with  Jonah  in  mind  —  the  oracle  against 


Purpose  Stories  273 

Babylon.  It  is  a  marvellously  woven  tissue  of 
metaphor  from  first  to  last,  but  point  out  to  them 
especially  verse  34,  "  Nebuchadnezzar  the  king  of 
Babylon  hath  devoured  me ;  he  hath  crushed  me, 
he  hath  made  me  an  empty  vessel,  he  hath  swal- 
lowed me  up  like  a  monster  (the  Hebrew  is 
dragon),  he  hath  filled  his  maw  with  my  deli- 
cacies, he  hath  cast  me  out."  And  verse  44,  "  And 
I  will  do  judgment  upon  Bel  in  Babylon,  and  I 
will  bring  forth  out  of  his  mouth  that  which  he  hath 
swallowed  up."  Bel  was  a  god  of  Babylon,  and  is 
constantly  connected  with  the  dragon  as  the  very 
title  of  one  of  the  Apocryphal  books  shows. 

The  figure  of  Babylon  as  a  devouring  monster, 
swallowing  up  Israel,  is  frequent  in  the  prophets 
before  and  during  the  captivity.  The  boys  and 
girls  will  find  it  in  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel,  as  well  as 
in  Jeremiah.  That  it  was  a  permanent  possession 
of  the  Jewish  mind  is  evident  from  the  fact  that 
it  reappears  in  Revelation.  It  was  as  natural,  as 
inevitable,  that  a  writer  of  parable  immediately 
after  the  return  should  figure  Babylon  as  a  mon- 
ster that  had  swallowed  up  Israel  and  had  been 
forced  to  cast  him  up  again,  as  that  Bunyan  in 
his  great  parable  should  figure  the  church  of 
Rome  as  a  superannuated  giant,  sitting  impotent 
in  his  cave,  biting  his  fingers  at  those  who 
passed  by. 


274  Telling  Bible  Storie* 

So  we  might  go  on  to  every  detail  of  this  won- 
derful parable,  and  find  it  paralleled  in  the  think- 
ing of  Israel  in  the  previous  centuries.  And  why 
should  it  not  be  so  ?  Why  should  we,  in  our  ar- 
rogant individualism,  insist  that  this  story  was 
written  to  teach  history  to  us  ?  Why  not  be  glad 
to  perceive  that  it  was  written  to  teach  an  impera- 
tively needed  truth  to  the  Hebrew  people  ?  Israel 
had  forgotten  her  high  vocation,  announced  to 
Abraham,  "  In  thee  shall  all  nations  of  the  earth 
be  blessed."  Never  more  zealous  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth  than  at 
this  period,  she  would  fain  have  done  it  by  destroy- 
ing all  the  other  nations  and  occupying  the  whole 
field.  This  prophetic  writer  —  a  prophet,  though 
he  wrote  in  parable  —  saw  that  her  mission  was 
not  to  destroy  but  to  save,  that  she  must  save  even 
at  cost  of  her  own  life.  How  clearly,  how  daz- 
zlingly,  this  great  truth  shines  out  when  we  cease 
to  look  for  the  prosaic  truth  of  history,  and  find 
the  higher  truth  of  poetry  !  What  pathos  there 
is  in  it  all !  The  great  German  critic,  Cornill, 
said  that  he  could  never  read  Jonah  without  tears. 
Let  us  cease  to  treat  the  book  as  a  burlesque,  as 
too  many  do,  even  of  those  who  believe  inspiration 
to  lie  in  literal  accuracy,  and  teach  our  children 
the  solemn  meaning  of  this  wonder  tale.  We 
Americans,  like  Israel,  often  need  hard  experi- 


Purpose  Stories  275 

ances  before  we  learn  what  God  wants  us  to  do. 
Like  Israel,  we  too  often  refuse  to  open  our  eyes 
to  that  which  is  our  true  vocation,  to  be  mediators 
of  the  redemption  of  the  world. 

But  this  is  the  most  advanced  lesson  of  the  book. 
Purely  as  a  story,  Jonah  is  one  of  the  best  stories 
in  the  Bible  for  the  tiny  ones,  the  children  who 
are  still  trailing  the  clouds  of  glorious  imagination 
which  they  brought  with  them  from  heaven  which 
is  their  home.  To  their  vivid  imagination  it  will 
all  be  true  —  the  embarkation,  the  storm,  the  terri- 
fied prayers  of  the  heathen  sailors,  the  ready  self- 
sacrifice  of  Jonah,  the  interposition  of  God  for  his 
rescue,  the  repentance  of  the  Ninevites,  the  quickly 
growing  gourd,  the  petulance  of  the  weary 
and  disappointed  prophet,  disappointed  that  his 
preaching  had  fulfilled  its  purpose  in  making  his 
prophecy  futile.  Told  to  the  little  ones  as  the 
beautiful  fairy  tale  that  it  is,  nothing  will  be  more 
delightful  nor  more  simple  than  to  expand  its 
meaning  as  the  child's  mind  expands,  until  he 
comes  to  realize  the  yearning  love  of  God  that 
gathers  up  in  its  infinite  compassion,  not  only  the 
most  alien  of  nations,  but  our  brothers  the  beasts 
of  the  field  and  the  forest,  as  St.  Francis  beauti- 
fully recognized  them  to  be.  The  last  words  of 
the  book,  put  in  their  proper  relation  to  the  story, 
and  given  their  full  significance,  will  do  more  to 


276  Telling  Bible  Stories 

make  a  boy  gentle  to  the  weak  and  the  ignorant 
and  considerate  to  people  of  other  hue  and  race 
than  his  own,  than  all  the  humane  societies  and 
missionary  associations  that  the  modern  mind  has 
yet  devised ;  "  Should  not  I  have  pity  on  Nineveh 
that  great  city,  wherein  are  more  than  sixscore 
thousand  persons  that  cannot  discern  between  their 
right  hand  and  their  left  hand,  and  also  much 
cattle?" 

And  later  will  come  those  deeper,  larger,  and 
more  personal  teachings,  to  which  I  have  before 
alluded,  the  truths  of  inward  experience,  and  the 
imperative  call  of  every  child  of  God  to  the  work 
of  missions  and  the  saving  of  the  world. 


Esther  i.— x. 

It  has  seemed  so  important  to  emphasize  the 
true  literary  character  and  the  profound  spiritual 
significance  of  Jonah,  that  I  have  left  myself  space 
only  for  a  brief  allusion  to  Esther  and  Job.  But 
for  my  purpose  little  more  is  needed.  Not  that 
they  are  unimportant,  but  that  the  meaning  of 
Esther  is  perfectly  simple,  and  that  of  Job  far  too 
profound  for  even  the  children  of  maturing  years. 
They  must  have  become  independent  thinkers  be- 


Purpose  Stories  277 

fore  they  can  find  in  Job  any  other  excellence  than 
its  superb  excellence  as  a  piece  of  literature.  The 
prologue  and  epilogue,  however,  are  a  story. 
When  the  mother  leaves  out  all  of  Job  but  these 
three  chapters,  she  perceives  that  widely  as  in 
almost  every  particular  it  differs  from  Esther,  it 
belongs  in  the  same  literary  class,  the  class  to 
which  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  belong  ;  that  is,  to 
oriental  wonde_r  literature.  It  is  because  so  few 
of  our  learned  theologians  are  familiar  with  this 
literature,  even  in  the  perfectly  accessible  and 
altogether  charming  "  Arabian  Nights,"  that  some 
of  our  most  devout  religious  teachers  are  gravely 
discussing  at  the  present  day  the  question  whether 
there  is  any  religious  or  moral  truth  in  Esther,  and 
whether  it  was  not  by  some  unaccountable  mistake 
that  it  found  a  place  among  sacred  Scriptures. 

For  it  is  true  that  the  story  shows  a  fierce,  un- 
relenting, vindictive  spirit  of  revenge,  that  it  does 
not  name  the  name  of  God,  and  that  it  implicitly 
commends  many  acts  which  are  not  noble  nor  even 
tolerable.  These  are  the  moral  difficulties  of  the 
book,  and  if  we  are  to  read  it  from  our  modern  and 
Western  point  of  view,  they  are  far  more  important 
than  the  historical  difficulties,  though  if  we  insist 
upon  calling  the  book  history,  these  are  absolutely 
insuperable.  The  book  shows  no  slightest  notion 
of  chronology.  It  would  have  been  impossible  for 


278  Telling  Bible  Stories 

any  Achsemenian  sovereign  to  have  chosen  either 
a  Jewess  for  a  queen  or  an  Amelekite  (Haman  the 
Agagite,  see  1  Sam.  xv.  32)  for  a  prime  minister. 
There  never  were,  in  that  period  of  Persian  his- 
tory, nor  so  far  as  we  know,  in  any  other,  such  restric- 
tions as  to  the  queen  seeing  her  husband  as  Esther 
had  to  contend  with  —  the  very  pivot  of  the  story. 
Nor  was  there  ever  such  liberty  for  an  uncle  to 
visit  his  niece  in  the  king's  harem.  The  length 
of  the  feast,  the  length  of  time  allotted  to  prepare 
a  chosen  maiden  for  introduction  to  the  king,  — 
these  are  simply  historical  impossibilities.  More- 
over, some  of  the  historic  statements  are  morally 
impossible;  for  instance,  the  issuance  of  a  decree 
for  a  general  massacre  of  the  Jews  eleven  months 
in  advance,  and  the  method  by  which  the  king  gets 
round  the  irrefragable  law  of  the  Medes  and  Per- 
sians, by  giving  the  Jews  permission  to  butcher  the 
Persians  for  two  days. 

It  would  be  possible  to  take  the  book  almost  verse 
by  verse  and  prove  its  historic  impossibility,  but  it 
would  be  utterly  absurd.  For  the  book  of  Esther 
is  not  a  history  at  all,  and  never  offered  itself  as 
such  :  it  is  Haggada,  a  purpose  story.  It  is  an 
idyl  of  patriotism,  given  to  the  Jews  in  that 
bitter  period  of  their  history  when  patriotism  was 
most  sorely  tested  and  most  urgently  needed,  — 
the  period  of  Greek  supremacy ;  and  it  probably 


Purpose  Stories  279 

did  more  than  any  book  in  the  Bible  to  keep 
patriotism  alive  in  that  dreadful  time.  Let  the 
children  who  are  studying  history  read  the  books 
of  Maccabees  in  the  Apocrypha  if  they  would 
learn  what  was  the  influence  of  the  book  of 
Esther. 

Esther  is  the  type  of  self-sacrifice  for  a  great 
cause.  There  is  no  direct  religious  teaching  ;  but 
read  it  with  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  in  mind,  and 
alongside  of  immediate  recognition  of  the  char- 
acter and  worth  of  the  book  as  a  picture  of 
oriental  customs  will  awake  the  perception  that 
unlike  all  other  oriental  stories  of  its  class  it  is 
penetrated  through  and  through  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  God.  Let  the  mother  beware  in 
telling  this  story  to  the  children  how  she  loses  this 
God  consciousness.  Loyalty  to  country,  as  one 
element  in  loyalty  to  God,  is  its  key-note. 


VI 

Job  i.,  ii.,  xlii.  7—17 

Job  was  doubtless  a  historical  character  of  the 
patriarchal  age,  although  a  great  Hebrew  rabbi 
has  said  that  "  Job  existed  not,  nor  was  created, 
but  is  a  parable."  He  simply  means,  and  is  right 
in  meaning,  that  no  part  of  the  book  of  Job  is  hia- 


280  Telling  Bible  Stories 

tory.  Job  was  not  a  Jew,  but  he  is  made  by  the 
author  of  the  book  a  personification  of  the  Jewish 
nation  in  captivity.  Reading  some  parts  of  Jere- 
miah, in  which  he  protests  against  the  efforts  of 
Israel  to  escape  from  the  doom  of  captivity  which 
God  has  pronounced  upon  the  nation,  it  seems 
very  clear  why,  and  when,  some  ancient  legend 
was  made  by  some  inspired  man  the  foundation 
of  this  wonderful  book. 

It  was  when  it  was  the  nation's  duty  simply 
to  bear. 

This,  however,  hardly  touches  the  edge  of  the 
purpose  of  this  book.  We  have  to  do  only  with 
the  prologue  and  epilogue  which,  as  so  generally  in 
the  "Arabian  Nights,"  enframe  the  separate  story 
of  the  thirty-nine  inner  chapters.  The  opening 
chapters  are  a  philosophic  treatment  of  pure  folk- 
lore—  a  purpose  story  again.  They  are  the 
attempt  to  discover  the  meaning  of  what  in  a 
primitive,  simple  condition  of  society  must 
always  be  a  mystery  —  the  afflictions  of  the  right- 
eous. The  problem  of  the  poetic  chapters  which 
the  prologue  and  epilogue  enframe  is  quite  other 
than  this  ;  but  it  does  not  concern  the  children, 
nor  any  but  advanced  thinkers.  The  profound 
thinker  and  deeply  inspired  writer  who  used  this 
ancient  folk  tale  to  explain  the  mystery  of  the 
sorrows  of  the  righteous  by  attributing  them  to 


Purpose  Storie*  281 

the  scepticism  of  Satan  knew  better  than  to 
change  the  time-honored  form  which  by  its  famil- 
iarity would  make  all  the  more  intelligible  the  far 
otherwise  profound  teaching  he  desired  to  base 
upon  it.  The  symbolic  numbers  and  the  poetic 
structure  of  the  four  announcements  of  woe  are 
left  just  as  the  writer  had  many  a  time  heard 
them  told  by  nurse  or  mother.  But  the  scenes  in 
heaven  are  no  part  of  the  ancient  story  ;  they 
are  the  result  of  the  writer's  search  for  the  mean- 
ing of  an  actual  experience.  It  is  he,  therefore, 
and  not  the  old  story-tellers,  who  introduces  the 
heavenly  council.  This  is  a  work  of  the  trained 
imagination,  familiar  by  experience  with  the  judi- 
cial processes  of  his  country  —  and  upon  these  the 
"  Arabian  Nights  "  will  throw  perfect  light.  He 
pictures  the  great  judicial  assembly  of  the  sons  of 
God  in  such  a  divan  as  Eastern  monarchs  hold. 
"  The  Satan "  is  among  them.  He  appears  to 
be  a  functionary  put  by  God  in  charge  of  this 
world,  and  this  is  the  impression  given  in  the 
Hebrew  in  a  number  of  earlier  passages  in  the 
Bible,  where  the  word  Satan  does  not  appear  in 
the  English  as  it  does  here.  The  Satan  comes 
from  "hurrying  to  and  fro  upon  the  earth,  and 
pacing  up  and  down  on  it."  This  is  in  precise 
accordance  with  the  Eastern  conception  of  "the 
busy  one,"  as  the  Arabs  call  him.  In  St.  Peter' a 


282  Telling  Bible  Stories 

Epistle  equal  familiarity  with  this  idea  gives  him 
the  name  "  the  peripatetic." 

From  the  question  put  to  him  by  God,  "Hast 
thou  considered  my  servant  Job,  that  there  is 
none  like  him  in  the  world  ?  "  it  appears  that  in 
the  mind  of  the  people  of  that  time  and  place  it 
was  the  Satan's  duty  to  detect  the  sins  and  defects 
of  men  ;  and  there  is  here  a  word  of  warning  for 
tale-bearing  children  :  perhaps  it  was  the  effect 
of  such  an  occupation  that  made  him  a  devil. 
The  pride  which  God  takes  in  his  good  servant 
Job  arouses  the  Satan's  passion  for  detecting 
faults,  and  the  conscience  of  many  a  child  will 
interpret  this  incident.  That  this  doubting  spirit 
may  be  convinced  of  the  reality  of  Job's  goodness, 
God  permits  the  trial  of  his  beloved  servant. 
And  here  again  is  a  suggestion  of  the  undeserved 
suffering  that  a  fault-finding,  tale-bearing  child 
may  be  the  means  of  inflicting. 

Evidently  there  is  far  more  in  this  prologue 
than  most  of  us  have  supposed,  and  its  meaning 
is  perhaps  peculiarly  difficult  for  adult  persons  to 
apprehend.  Yet  it  is  precisely  one  that  will  find 
quick  response  in  the  ingenuous  mind  of  a  child 
of  ten  or  eleven.  For  its  marvellous  teaching  is 
that  the  interests  of  man  are  the  interests  of 
heaven  ;  that  God  and  all  the  angels  are  con- 
cerned that  people  shall  be  good  and  shall  have 


Purpose  Storie*  283 

the  credit  of  being  good  ;  that  the  goodness  of  a 
good  person  should  be  precious  to  all  who  know 
him.  Not  until  the  children  are  much  older,  and 
have  come  to  the  serious  study  of  ethics,  are  they 
capable  of  sounding  the  almost  unfathomable  depths 
of  this  beautifully  imaginative  story.  Let  us  take 
our  shoes  from  off  our  feet  while  we  stand  on  this 
holy  ground,  learning  from  this  story  that  the 
moral  problems  which  cannot  but  assail  even  the 
angels,  "  the  sons  of  God,"  and  which  they  must 
needs  in  some  way  work  out,  —  else  their  goodness 
is  like  the  goodness  of  Adam  and  Eve  in  Eden,  the 
unreal  goodness  of  the  untried,  —  are  wrought  out 
for  them  by  the  sons  of  men,  and  are  potent  for  the 
angels  because  of  the  pure  disinterested  sympathy 
of  which  angels  are  capable.  For  the  sake  of  the 
moral  lesson  to  the  angels,  —  to  the  Satan  himself, 
if  he  would  but  have  received  it,  —  he  is  permitted 
to  go  on  testing  the  man  of  integrity  to  the  very 
limit  of  his  mortal  powers.  What  more  soul- 
enlarging,  soul-fortifying  view  of  life  and  its  dis- 
cipline of  temptation  can  a  mother  give  to  her 
older  children  ?  Where  in  all  story  lore,  where  in 
all  literature  outside  of  the  Bible,  will  she  find  so 
lofty  a  sanction  for  the  effort  to  acquire  moral 
character,  for  acquiescence  in  trial,  and  war  to 
the  death  against  temptation,  as  this  ineffable 
fellowship  with  the  sons  of  God? 


284  Telling  Bible  Storie* 


VII 

My  task  is  done.  Its  reward  is  mine  already 
if  I  have  given  any  effective  assistance  to  mothers 
in  the  use  of  Old  Testament  story  lore  for  the 
spiritual  development  of  their  children,  not  alone 
in  infancy,  but  through  all  their  maturing  years. 
I  trust  that  I  have  succeeded  in  showing  that  the 
themes  which  lie  at  the  heart  of  the  Bible  stories 
are  the  great  central  themes  into  which  all  expe- 
rience, all  knowledge,  all  study  of  science  and  phi- 
losophy, as  well  as  of  theology  and  morals,  sooner 
or  later  meet.  I  have  here  only  briefly  to  reca- 
pitulate the  method  by  which,  as  I  believe,  the 
mother  may  reap  the  richest  harvest  from  her  use 
of  the  Bible  with  her  children  ;  that  which,  in 
analogy  with  the  educational  system  of  to-day,  I 
have  called  the  graded  method  of  telling  Bible 
stories. 

First,  at  about  three,  the  story  in  its  simplest 
possible  outline,  and  as  much  as  may  be  in  the 
Bible  words.  Then  at  about  five  an  elementary 
unfolding  of  its  spiritual  meaning,  in  answer  to 
the  child's  importunate  "  Why  ?  "  This  is  to  be 
followed  at  about  eight  by  careful  coordination 
of  the  story  with  the  child's  first  elementary 
knowledge  of  mythology  and  history.  A  year  or 


Purpose  Stories  285 

two  later  the  coordination  of  these  stories  with 
geography  and  elementary  science  may  be  in 
order,  and  not  very  much  later,  with  the  child's 
sense  of  language  as  illustrated  in  poetry  and 
wonder  tales.  At  about  twelve  or  thirteen  the 
alert  young  mind,  expanded  from  its  earliest  ac- 
tivity by  ever  expanding  apprehension  of  spiritual 
truth,  never  having  been  confused  by  any  contra- 
diction between  its  Biblical  and  its  secular  acquisi- 
tions, always  having  been  harmoniously  active  in 
its  three  functions  of  imagination,  emotion,  and 
will,  is  ready  for  the  theological  and  ethical  inter- 
pretation of  the  story,  in  what  may  be  called  the 
grammar  school  grade  of  these  interpretations,  of 
which  he  has  already  had  the  elementary  grade. 
His  more  advanced  historical  work  will  enable 
him  to  put  the  stories  in  their  proper  place  in  his- 
tory, and  his  studies  in  the  classics  and  in  English 
literature  to  appreciate  the  literary  character  of 
the  Bible,  the  place  of  each  story  in  the  history  of 
literature,  its  oriental  diction  and  forms  of  speech. 
There  will  be  no  difficulty  if  this  method  has 
been  pursued  thus  far,  if  neither  the  child's  Bible 
nor  his  religion  has  been  kept  as  a  thing  apart, 
unrelated  to  his  school  work  or  his  week  day  life, 
reserved  for  Sunday  or  forgotten  entirely  —  there 
will  be  no  difficulty,  when  this  method  has  been 
pursued  till  his  fifteenth  or  sixteenth  year,  in 


286  Telling  Bible  Stories 

carrying  it  farther,  and  relating  it  to  his  higher 
study  of  ethics  and  philosophy,  as  well  as  of  his- 
tory and  literature,  and  making  it  an  illumination 
of  both,  instead  of,  as  too  often  sadly  happens,  a 
stumbling-block  and  cause  of  blind  bewilderment. 
This,  then,  is  the  value  of  the  Bible  stories  for 
the  child :  that  they  give  a  religious  meaning  to 
all  the  experiences  of  his  early  life,  and  furnish 
the  bond  of  unity,  the  centralizing  focus  of  all  the 
processes,  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual,  of  his 
maturing  years.  "  No  other  book  finds  me  as  the 
Bible  does,"  said  Coleridge,  and  this  is  superla- 
tively true  of  the  child  of  any  age.  The  Bible 
stories  find  him  as  no  other  stories  do.  The  Old 
Testament  made  the  Hebrews  a  peculiar  people, 
by  developing  in  them  an  unique  God  conscious- 
ness. It  will  do  the  same  for  the  people  of  the 
United  States  when  it  is  freed  from  overloading 
convention  and  unintelligent  interpretation.  It 
will  do  this  for  our  children,  if  we  give  it  to 
them  as  it  is.  And  what  better  can  we  ask  for 
them  than  an  abiding  consciousness  of  the  pres- 
ence of  God? 


APPENDIX 

SINCE  this  volume  was  published  letters  have  come  to  me 
from  various  quarters  asking  where  the  Bible  story-teller  may 
find  those  myths  and  legends  of  ancient  peoples  to  which 
allusion  has  here  been  made.  The  following  bibliography  has 
been  compiled  in  answer  to  these  requests.  It  may  seem 
unduly  large;  it  would  be  unnecessarily  large  did  all  public 
libraries  possess  an  identical  equipment.  As  they  do  not,  a 
number  of  titles  covering  practically  the  same  ground  have 
been  given  in  the  hope  that  when  one  work  is  not  available 
another  may  be  found. 

A  few  titles  in  the  list  are  offered  rather  as  introduction  to 
the  subject,  and  preparatory  to  the  detection  of  analogies 
between  biblical  and  other  ancient  lores,  than  as  furnishing 
such  analogies.  "The  Arabian  Nights,"  Keightley's  "Fairy 
Mythology"  and  Bulfinch's  "Age  of  Fable,"  for  example, 
although  they  make  no  allusion  to  biblical  truth  or  Bible 
story,  are  an  almost  indispensable  preparation  for  sym- 
pathetic treatment  of  that  Oriental  lore  which  we  find  in  the 
Bible. 

GENERAL  READING 

THE  THOUSAND  AND  ONE  NIGHTS.  Translated  by  Lane, 
with  Notes.  Edition  of  1867.  Three  volumes,  fully  illus- 
trated. 

Unfortunately,  this  edition  is  out  of  print,  and  can  be  seen 
only  in  the  large  public  libraries.  The  notes  are  a  liberal 
education  in  Eastern  manners,  customs  and  modes  of  thought. 
287 


288  Appendix 

The  earlier  edition  (1847),  identical  with  the  later,  but  want- 
ing the  notes,  is  more  easily  found.  The  three-volume  edi- 
tion should  be  asked  for.  The  recent  two-volume  edition  with 
its  modern  illustrations  has  not  the  value  of  the  earlier  work, 
the  illustrations  of  which,  being  accurate  representations  of 
actual  scenes,  give  it  an  educating  value  which  the  other  lacks. 

FAIRY  MYTHOLOGY.  Keightley.  Folk-lore  from  widely 
extended  sources. 

THE  QUEEN  OF  THE  AIR.  John  Ruskin.  Symbolic  mean- 
ing of  Greek  myths. 

MYTHS  AND  MYTH  MAKERS.  John  Fiske.  General,  com- 
parative. 

THE  AGE  OP  FABLE.  Bulfmch.  Greek,  Roman,  Eastern 
and  Northern  Mythology,  Druids. 

THE  CHILDHOOD  OF  RELIGIONS.  Appendix.  Clodd. 
Mythological  and  historic. 

MANUAL  OF  MYTHOLOGY.  A.  L.  Murray.  Gives  stories 
briefly,  without  comparisons. 

OUTLINES  OF  PRIMITIVE  BELIEF  AMONG  THE  INDO-EURO- 
PEAN RACES.  C.  F.  Keary.  Comparative,  general. 

CLASSIC  MYTHS  SERIES.  C.  M.  Gayley.  Historic,  chiefly 
Greek,  Roman  and  Norse.  Many  selections  from  English 
authors  who  have  used  these  myths. 

JUVENTUS  MUNDI.  W.  E.  Gladstone.  Comparative. 
Many  myths  and  legends. 

Two  OLD  FAITHS.  J.  M.  Mitchel  and  W.  Muir.  Hindoo 
and  Mohammedan.  Comparative. 

CURIOUS  MYTHS  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES.    S.  Baring-Gould. 

FAMOUS  LEGENDS.  Emeline  G.  Crommelin.  Legends  of 
all  countries. 

HISTORY  OF  GREECE.  George  Grote.  Vol.  I.,  Legendary 
Greece.  Especially  chapters  I,  XVI,  for  a  general  view  of 
Grecian  myths  and  the  attitude  of  mind  toward  myth  in  the 
early  times. 


Appendix  289 

THE  STORY  OF  ROLAND.  James  Baldwin.  An  illustration 
of  the  character  of  tales  of  chivalry. 

CURIOSITIES  OF  INDO-EUROPEAN  TRADITIONS  AND  FOLK- 
LORE. Walter  K.  Kelly. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  SCIENCE  OF  COMPARATIVE  MYTH- 
OLOGY AND  FOLK-LORE.  George  William  Cox.  General. 

DISCOURSE  UPON  THE  THEOLOGY  AND  MYTHOLOGY  OF  THE 
PAGANS.  General. 

FAITHS  OF  THE  WORLD.  St.  Giles  Lectures.  Various 
Authors.  General.  Religious  view  points. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  A  SCIENTIFIC  SYSTEM  OF  MYTHOLOGY. 
Symbolic  and  comparative. 

RELIGION  AND  MYTH.  James  Macdonald.  Ethnic.  No 
stories. 

OLD  DECCAN  DAYS.    M.  Frere.    Hindoo  folk-tales. 

LIGHT  ON  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  FROM  BABEL.  A.  T.  Clay. 
Compares  Babylonian  stories  with  Old  Testament  stories. 
Invaluable. 

SPECIAL  REFERENCES 

Page  63,  line  9.  Rain.  Tyler,  "Researches  into  the  Early 
History  of  Mankind,"  tells,  p.  344,  of  the  ideas  of  some  peo- 
ples that  rain  is  the  tears  of  a  god. 

Page  65,  line  1.  Creation  myths  of  all  peoples.  Maspero, 
"Dawn  of  Civilization,"  "Egypt  and  Chaldsea,"  gives  the 
Phoenician  or  early  Syrian  creation  myths.  See  also  Maspero, 
"Struggle  of  the  Nations,"  pp.  167-169. 

For  the  Egyptian  cosmogony,  see  Maspero,  op  tit.,  pp.  127, 
128. 

For  Norse  creation  myths,  see  Bulfinch,  "Classical 
Myths,"  p.  366  ff.,  and  Murray,  "Manual  of  Mythology," 
p.  357. 

For  Scandinavian  cosmogony,  see  "Faiths  of  the  World," 
p.  222. 

For  Persian  cosmogony,  see  the  same,  p.  95  ff. 


290  Appendix 

For  East  Indian  cosmogonies,  see  Fiske's  "Myths  and 
Myth-makers,"  p.  17;  Murray,  op  cit.,  p.  379  ft. 

For  Greek  creation  myths,  see  Bulfinch,  "  Classic  Myths  in 
English  Literature"  pp.  37-39,  and  "Age  of  Fable,"  Bul- 
finch, pp.  1-3,  19-23. 

For  the  origin  of  man,  "  Classic  Myths,"  pp.  42,  43. 

For  North  American  creation  myths,  Brinton,  "Myths  of 
the  New  World,"  pp.  195-198.  Fiske  (op  cit.)  says  that  the 
Bible  of  the  Quiches  (Central  America),  Popol-Vuh,  gives  a 
strange  combination  of  monotheistic  and  polytheistic  myths, 
of  creation  by  a  word  of  a  god.  "Aztec  Myths,"  ibid.,  pp. 
254-257. 

For  the  creation  myth  of  New  Zealand  aborigines,  see 
Tylor,  "Primitive  Culture,"  pp.  290-293.  The  Chinese  myth 
is  found  on  p.  294.  Various  Aryan  myths  on  pp.  295,  296. 
Mr.  Andrew  Lang's  "Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion"  contains  a 
large  number  of  nature  and  cosmogonic  myths  from  all  parts 
of  the  world.  Brinton,  "American  Hero  Myths,"  gives  the 
Algonquin  creation  myth.  Baring-Gould,  "  Legends  of  Old 
Testament  Characters,"  brings  together  a  vast  number  of 
Moslem,  Jewish  and  Rabbinical  legends  from  the  Creation  to 
Isaiah. 

Page  65,  line  5.  The  Assyrian  story  of  creation.  There  is 
a  wealth  of  recent  material.  Clay's  book  (see  above)  is  the 
most  available.  Pp.  55  to  76  contain  the  gist  of  all  that  has 
been  discovered  on  this  subject  to  the  present  time.  See  also 
"Encyclopedia  Britannica,"  article  "  Babylonia,"  p.  189,  "Art, 
Science  and  Literature."  "The  Seven  Tablets  of  Creation," 
edited  by  L.  W.  King,  Vol.  XII  of  Luzac's  "Semitic  Text  and 
Translation,"  gives  the  Assyrian  text  on  one  page  and  a 
literal  translation  on  the  other.  In  the  introduction,  p.  Ixxxi  ft. 
treats  of  the  first  story  and  p.  xciii  ft.  of  the  second.  The 
work  is  rather  learned,  but  cultivated  minds  will  enjoy  its 
myths  and  legends.  Libraries  which  have  neither  of  the 


Appendix  291 

above  works  will,  perhaps,  contain  Schrader's  "Cuneiform 
Inscriptions  and  the  Old  Testament,"  a  mine  of  Old  Testa- 
ment illustration,  though  much  has  been  discovered  since  it 
was  published. 

Maspero,  "Dawn  of  Civilization,"  gives  the  Chaldean 
creation  story,  pp.  537-545.  For  Genesis  i,  see  p.  127. 

Page  79,  line  5.  Apocryphal  book  of  Wisdom.  Wisdom  of 
Solomon,  ii,  24,  "through  envy  of  the  devil  came  death  into 
the  world."  Satan  is  identified  with  the  serpent  in  Rev.  xii, 
9,  xxii,  2,  showing  the  influence  of  the  Apochrypha  upon  the 
Jewish  mind  of  that  time.  Hughes,  "Dictionary  of  Islam," 
article  "Devil,"  shows  the  Moslem  belief  that  he  was  the 
progenitor  of  the  evil  jinn.  (See  also  footnote  to  article 
"Demon,"  in  Hughes.)  The  annotated  edition  of  Lane's 
"Arabian  Nights,"  Vol.  I,  chap.  1,  note  21,  gives  a  full 
resume  of  Eastern  beliefs  about  the  jinni.  Milton  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  popular  identification  of  the  serpent  with 
Satan  (see  "Paradise  Lost,"  Book  I,  lines  27-49  and  81-83), 
although  this  belief  was  held  in  the  Church  long  before 
Milton's  time.  See  Hastings'  "Bible  Dictionary,"  article 
"Serpent,"  p.  591,  col.  1,  paragraph  2.  Interesting  accounts 
of  serpent  worship  may  be  found  in  Fiske,  op  cit.,  pp.  105, 
106,  and  Lubbock,  "Origin  of  Civilization,"  pp.  174-176. 
The  seven-headed  serpent  appears  in  one  of  the  Lays  of  the 
great  Assyrian  epic.  This,  however,  rather  resembles  the 
dragon  of  Scripture  and  the  Greek  python  (Bulfinch,  "Age 
of  Fable,"  p.  26). 

Page  84.  Sacred  and  mythical  trees.  For  Yggdrasil,  the 
Norse  world-tree,  see  Bulfinch,  "Classic  Myths,"  p.  367. 
The  sacred  tree  of  the  Babylonians,  see  "Encyclopedia  Brit- 
annica,"  article  "Babylonia,"  p.  193,  col.  1.  Schrader's 
"Cuneiform  Inscriptions,"  Vol.  I,  p.  28,  sec.  9.  Lubbock's 
"Origin  of  Civilization,"  pp.  191-196.  Sayce,  "Religion  of 
the  Ancient  Babylonians,"  pp.  241,  242,  shows  that  the  cedar 


292  Appendix 

was  the  Tree  of  Life  with  these  people.  (For  Eden,  see  pp. 
237-239.)  This  tree  is  guarded  (like  the  gate  of  Eden  in  the 
biblical  story)  by  a  cherub  with  a  flaming  sword  (of  50  points 
and  117  heads). 

For  the  golden  apples  of  the  Hesperides,  see  Hawthorne's 
"Wonder  Book"  or  "Myths  Every  Child  Should  Know"  (the 
same  story),  p.  3;  or  Morris,  "The  Earthly  Paradise,"  Part 
IV.  For  the  Greek  Paradise,  Bulfinch,  "Age  of  Fable," 
p.  3. 

Page  108,  lines  4-6.  Adam's  family  the  only  people  on 
earth.  This  was,  however,  the  Chaidsean  idea  when  the  great 
epic  was  written.  See  Maspero,  "Dawn  of  Civilization," 
pp.  545,  546. 

Page  110,  lines  17-19.  God  not  to  be  found  outside  of 
Canaan.  This  is  the  general  understanding  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  passage  referred  to.  But  Montefiore*,  "Origin 
and  Foundation  of  the  Hebrew  Religion,"  is  not  sure  of  it. 

Page  118,  lines  8-12.  Eternal  happiness  without  dying. 
Although  the  tragic  death  of  Hercules  is  related  by  many 
ancient  writers,  the  myth  that  he  went  to  the  abode  of  the 
gods  without  dying  was  widely  held  (Bulfinch,  "Age  of 
Fable,"  p.  175).  For  Romulus,  see  Ihne's  "Early  Rome"  or 
Niebuhr's  "History  of  Rome,"  Vol.  I.  The  story  of  Gany- 
mede is  in  Homer,  but  was  altered  in  later  legend  (Bulfinch, 
"Age  of  Fable,"  p.  183).  See  Harper's  "Classical  Dic- 
tionary," and  also  for  Semiramis.  Grote's  "Greece,"  Vol.  I, 
gives  the  Greek  myths  and  explains  their  value. 

Page  120,  line  13.  Flood  legends.  For  Babylonian  legends, 
see  Clay,  pp.  77-88,  "Encyclopedia  Britannica,"  article 
"Babylonia,"  p.  193,  head  of  col.  2;  Maspero,  "Dawn  of 
Civilization,"  pp.  566-571.  (The  birds  which  figure  here 
are  dove  and  swallow.)  Greek  flood  myths,  see  Bulfinch, 
"Classic  Myths,"  pp.  48,  49,  "Age  of  Fable,"  pp.  21-26. 
For  Central  American  myths,  see  "Faiths  of  the  World,"  p. 


Appendix  293 

257  (the  birds  are  vulture  and  humming-bird).  Brinton, 
pp.  200,  202,  206-213,  gives  flood  myths  of  many  Indian 
tribes.  Baring-Gould  "Legends  of  the  Patriarchs  and 
Prophets,"  and  Bulfinch,  "Age  of  Fable,"  give  various  flood 
legends. 

Page  129,  lines  21,  22.  Oldest  epic  ever  written.  It  should 
perhaps  have  been  said  the  oldest  of  which  we  have  as  yet 
knowledge. 

Maspero,  "Dawn  of  Civilization,"  pp.  572-591,  tells  the 
story  of  Gilgames,  the  Chaldsean  Nimrod,  who  also  in  many 
respects  resembles  Samson. 

Page  131,  line  9.  Explanations  of  the  diversity  of  tongues. 
See  Clay,  pp.  89-124;  Livingstone's  "Missionary  Travels  in 
South  Africa,"  p.  528. 

Page  142,  line  23.  Old  Sagas  of  Scandinavia.  See  Bul- 
finch, "Classic  Myths,"  p.  392  ff.  for  the  Saga  of  the  Vol- 
sungs. 

Page  149,  line  21.  Legends  about  Abraham.  See  "Jewish 
Encyclopaedia,"  Vol.  I,  pp.  85-90,  and  Baring-Gould,  op  cit.; 
Clay,  op  cit.,  pp.  145-200;  Sayce,  "Religion  of  Ancient 
Babylon,"  p.  163. 

Pages  152, 153.  Fourteenth  chapter  of  Genesis.  Some  such 
occurrence  probable.  Clay,  op  cit.,  pp.  125-143. 

Page  159,  lines  1,  2.     See  under  p.  149. 

Page  160,  last  line.  Book  of  Jubilees,  xvii,  17,  xix,  5,  num- 
bers ten  trials  of  Abraham's  faith.  They  are  attributed  not, 
however,  to  God,  but  to  Satan.  Other  Rabbinical  books,  not 
accessible  to  the  English  reader,  also  describe  them. 

Page  171,  line  2.  Self-immolation  of  Isaac.  "Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica,"  article  "Babylonia,"  p.  193,  col.  2.  The 
sacrifice  of  Isaac  was  probably  Lay  I  of  a  great  Chaldsean 
epic.  Lubbock,  "Origin  of  Civilization,"  pp.  242,  243. 
Maspero,  "Struggle  of  the  Nations,"  p.  160.  The  ancient 
Syrian  religion  (much  older  than  Abraham),  required  the 


294  Appendix 

sacrifice  of  the  first  born  son.  Kronos,  the  god  of  Byblos 
(modern  Gebeil)  sacrificed  his  first  born  son  (ibid.,  note  3). 
See  "Jewish  Encyclopedia,"  Vol.  VI,  pp.  617,  618. 

Page  170,  last  line.  Special  interposition  of  a  divine  being. 
Bulfinch,  "Age  of  Fable,"  pp.  262-264. 

Page  174,  line  8.  Jacob  called  the  Hebrew  Ulysses.  See 
any  translation  of  Books  IX,  X,  XII,  XIII  of  the  "Odyssey" 
when  Ulysses  relates  the  adventures  he  met  on  his  return 
from  Troy.  Bulnnch,  "Classic  Myths,"  pp.  313-337;  ibid., 
"  Age  of  Fable,"  p.  290  ff. 

Page  176,  line  1.  Homer's  gods  fighting  with  men.  "Four 
Old  Greek  Gods,"  Jennie  Hale,  pp.  31,  32,  39,  62,  etc; 
Bulfinch,  "Age  of  Fable,"  p.  267. 

Page  178,  line  24.  Anointing  a  pillar.  Sayce,  "Religion 
of  Ancient  Babylon,"  p.  408  ff.  There  is  the  consecration  of  a 
Beth-el  in  the  Babylonian  epic  of  Gisdhubar,  op  cit.,  p.  410 
and  note.  Anointing  stones  is  frequently  mentioned.  Syria 
yet  contains  many  stone  pillars,  evidently  objects  of  ancient 
worship.  Maspero,  "Struggle  of  the  Nations,"  p.  160.  Lub- 
bock,  "Origin  of  Civilization,"  pp.  204-212,  says  nothing 
about  anointing  stones,  but  shows  their  widespread  use  in 
religion.  "  Ethnology  in  Folk-Lore,"  G.  L.  Gomme,  Modern 
Science  Series  tells,  pp.  27  and  167,  about  the  worship  of 
stones. 

Page  181,  line  26.  Pit  or  dry  cistern.  There  is  a  picture 
of  one  in  Lane's  "Arabian  Nights,"  Fourth  Voyage  of  Es- 
Sindibad  of  the  Sea  (Sindbad  the  Sailor),  Vol.  Ill,  p.  43,  an- 
notated edition;  Vol.  II,  p.  482,  edition  of  1847. 

Page  190,  line  9.  The  story  of  Prometheus.  Bulfinch, 
"Age  of  Fable,"  p.  19;  Grote,  Vol.  I;  Tylor,  "Early  History 
of  Mankind,"  or  other  works  cited.  See  also  the  poems  by 
Shelley  and  Mrs.  Browning. 

Page  196,  lines  14-16.  Good  conscience  in  (Edipus  and  in 
ourselves.  Compare  Riddle's  translation  of  Sophocles' 


295 

'CEdipus  the  King"  ((Edipus  Tyrannus),  lines   1307-1345 
with  the  repentance  of  David,  2  Sam.  xii,  1-23. 

Pages  197,  198.  Belief  about  hair.  Jewish  superstitions 
on  the  subject  are  described  in  the  "Jewish  Encyclopaedia," 
Vol.  VI,  p.  158. 

Page  198,  line  17.  Samson  like  Herakles  (Hercules).  Bui- 
finch,  "Classic  Myths,"  pp.  133  ff.,  234-243;  ibid.,  "Age  of 
Fable,"  pp.  178-185.  "Four  Old  Greek  Gods,"  p.  73  ff. 

Page  200,  line  24.  The  lattice  in  the  life  of  Eastern  women. 
See,  for  example,  Lane's  "Arabian  Nights,"  "The  Story  of 
Azeez  and  Azeezeh,"  Vol.  I,  p.  482,  edition  of  1865;  ("Aziz 
and  Azizah,"  Vol.  I,  p.  397,  edition  of  1847).  There  is  a  good 
picture  of  the  lattice. 

Page  207,  line  20.  Jephthah.  Although  the  story  of 
Jephthah  is  not  given  here,  it  will  be  interesting  to  compare 
the  fate  of  his  daughter  with  the  story  of  Iphigenia  in  Bui- 
finch's  "Classic  Myths,"  p.  288,  and  in  "Four  Old  Greek 
Gods."  A  translation  of  Iphigenia  at  Aulis  and  Iphigenia 
among  the  Taurians,  by  Euripides,  may  profitably  be  read. 

Page  234,  line  1.  Wager  of  battle  by  single  combat.  Brace's 
"Gesta  Christi,"  p.  162. 

Page  237,  line  11.  The  story  of  David.  "Faiths  of  the 
World,"  p.  260.  The  story  of  the  Aztec  king,  Neza-hual- 
coytl  of  Texcuco,  is  almost  a  counterpart  of  the  David  story, 
says  the  writer. 

Page  272,  line  24.  Jonah  is  a  symbol.  Tylor,  "  Researches 
into  the  Early  History  of  Mankind,"  finds  Jonah  to  be  a  resur- 
rection story,  pp.  344-346.  The  Hebrew  view  of  its  true 
purpose  is  shown  in  the  "  Jewish  Encyclopaedia,"  Vol.  VII 
pp.  229,  230. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN     INITIAL    FINE    OF    25    CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  fl.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


JAIV  dO    1 


r* 


14  1942 


\UG131952L 
DEAD 


i  -  3    3  Yi  '-  < 
u 


LD  21-50m-l,'3 


04497 


338019 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


